Werner E. Reichardt

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Werner E. Reichardt" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Werner E. Reichardt (30 January 1924 – 18 September 1992) was a German physicist and biologist who helped to establish the field of

As a young student, Werner Reichardt was a pupil in the laboratory of Hans Erich Hollmann, a pioneer of ultra-shortwave communication. Because of his knowledge he was drafted in 1941 to the German air force as a radio technician.There he met members of the resistance and established a covert radio connection with the Western Allies. In 1944 Reichardt was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death, but escaped, and hid in Berlin until the end of the war.

From 1946 to 1950 he studied physics at the

Reichardt's findings have contributed to understanding of information processing in nervous systems. From joint work (with Bernhard Hassenstein and Hans Wenking) on the visual system of insects and its effect on the flight orientation, the correlation model developed the idea that the visual system of man could be similarly investigated, and led to a general theory of motion perception

Reichardt detectors

See Motion perception#First-order motion perception
In the 1950s, Reichardt, along with Hassenstein proposed a model of how a neuron receiving input from photoreceptors, which only respond to changes in luminance, could be used to compute motion. Each photoreceptor, responded to a change in luminance at a given location in visual space. Comparison of the phase shift of activity in adjacent cells indicated the direction of movement from one neuron's receptive field to the other. This model of micro-circuitry became known as a Reichardt detector. Whilst there is experimental evidence consistent with the hypothetical behaviour of a Reichardt detector, the corresponding circuitry has not yet been found.^[2]

In honor of Reichardt's pioneering work, the Tübingen cluster of excellence Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN; founded 2007/2008) was named after him.

Honors and awards

• 1965: Honorary Professor of the University of Tübingen
• 1970: full member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz
• 1971: full member of the
  German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
  Hall
• 1972: foreign member of the
  Cambridge (Massachusetts)
• 1978: foreign member of the
  Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam^[3]
• 1980: Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts,
• 1984: Senator of the Max Planck Society
• 1985:
  Bela Julesz
  )
• 1988: foreign member of the
  National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
• 1989: foreign member of the American Philosophical Society Philadelphia
• 1989: Member of the Academia Europaea
• 1989:
  RWTH Aachen

References

• In memoriam Werner Reichardt

External links

• / ~ wreichardt Personal Website of Werner Reichardt for MPI with vita, list of publications and obituary norm