Henning Scheich


Henning Scheich was a German brain researcher and psychiatrist. He was director of the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology until 2010 and head of the institute department until 2013.

Life and career

After finishing school at the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium in Düsseldorf, Scheich studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Cologne, at Munich and Montpellier, France. He concluded his medicine studies with the State examination at the University of Munich in 1966.
From 1967 to 1969 Scheich worked as a PhD student on the human electroencephalogram at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry Munich in the department run by Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt. He completed his PhD degree with highest praise in 1969. While working on his PhD, he published a series of scientific works on the physiology of the visual system of cats.
From 1969 to 1972 Scheich served as post-doctoral student under Theodore H. Bullock at the University of California in San Diego, USA. Here he participated in the research on the Jamming avoidance response, a characteristic of Behavioral communication among electric fish and on its neurophysiological foundations. From 1972 to 1974 Scheich led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, on the subject of acoustic communication.
In 1974, Scheich accepted a professorship for zoology and neurobiology at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Between 1977 and 1985 he undertook field research trips to the Amazon basin, central Africa and Thailand, where he studied electric fish and the Behavioral communication of birds, that led to the discovery of Ultrasonic hearing. Scheich was guest professor at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico and joint the Australian National University Canberra, for a research period, during which time he discovered the electric sensory organ of the platypus.
After German reunification and the foundation of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Science Association in 1992, Scheich was appointed director and head of the department at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg, that included a professorship for physiology at the medical faculty of the Otto-von-Guericke University. The LIN, that has originated from an institute of the Scientific Academy of the GDR, focuses on research into the mechanisms of learning and memory. The research program of Scheich at the LIN concentrated on the organisation of auditory and vocal behaviour in animals and humans and in this context on the role of the Auditory cortex during learning events. In 2003 Scheich participated in the establishment of the annual International Conference on Auditory Cortex event.
Scheich’s tenure as the director of the LIN ended in 2010. During the same year he also retired from the Otto-von-Guericke University. From 2014 to 2018 Scheich has continued his work with his emeritus group.
Scheich missed no opportunity to publicly emphasize the significance of brain research for human education and was involved in organizations associated with research support, the self-administration of science and political counselling.
Scheich died on 30 May 2025, at the age of 83.

Honours and memberships

Category:1942 births
Category:2025 deaths
Category:21st-century German biologists
Category:German neuroscientists
Category:20th-century German biologists
Category:Scientists from Wuppertal
Category:Academic staff of Technische Universität Darmstadt