The race to inner space
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Born with an eye for science
Given that Dr. Bewersdorf grew up in Aalen, Germany—headquarters of world-famous Carl Zeiss, Inc., and dozens of other optical imaging companies—and had an early interest in astrophysics, it’s only natural he would now spend his days, and many of his nights, working with high-resolution optical instruments. However, he says, “As a kid I was interested in cosmology and theoretical physics, not stargazing, and definitely not optics. And the funny thing is, I also thought biology was really boring. My dad was a medical doctor, and I had no interest in following in his footsteps.”
Instead, Dr. Bewersdorf enrolled at the prestigious University of Freiburg to study physics. “But,” he says, “it dawned on me that very few individuals are able to make a major impact on the field of theoretical physics. A typical project involves one giant particle accelerator and thousands of people—on a given day it doesn’t really matter whether or not you show up for work!”
During a year as an exchange student at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, he gained a clearer picture of his career path. “I attended a lecture about medical physics, and then and there I decided to switch my studies to medical imaging,” he says.
“I realized that I wanted to do work that mattered to people beyond a small group of colleagues and that helped people by advancing medical research.” Thus returning from Scotland with a new mission, Dr. Bewersdorf moved to Heidelberg, a world center of applied physics in the medical imaging field. Wrapping up his undergraduate studies with a summer course in optics, he attended a lecture by Dr. Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute, an internationally prominent inventor of microscope technologies. Fascinated by Dr. Hell’s work, Dr. Bewersdorf applied for an internship in his lab. He spent the next eight years there, completing the German equivalent of a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) and postdoctoral fellowship while also working at the Leica company developing one of Dr. Hell’s inventions: the 4Pi microscope.
