Dr. Nils Kaiser
med-verleihung

Eulogy on Dr. Nils Kaiser, Gauting, on the occasion of his 25 years of membership

vignetteProfessor Gruss, President of the Max Planck Institute, presenting the Gold Membership Medal at the end of the eulogy

In 1958, when Dr. Kaiser came to the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, as it was then called, he had the great fortune to get to know Werner Heisenberg personally. He was already working on the development of his great idea at that time: the bloodless determination of glucose in the blood with the help of a non-invasive laser technology. At the beginning of the sixties, on his transfer to the Institute of Plasmaphysics in Garching, he found he finally had the apparatus possibilities and the necessary know-how for laser and microwave technology at his disposal. Here he was able to examine his theoretical considerations and findings using appropriate instruments and develop them to a patent that was much cited later. This modern laser technology was later to revolutionize medical diagnostics. Molecules of differing structures vary in their resonance for electromagnetic waves. These molecular resonances and their permutations were then enlisted to describe metabolic processes - a revolutionary step in medical diagnostics. In an interview with the pharmaceutical company Merck he was, as a result, named “the originator of infrared spectroscopy in medicine”.

In his role as company medical doctor Dr Kaiser supported the Max-Planck Institute for more than thirteen years and afterwards remained faithful to our scientific organization as a personal supporting member. Despite his advanced years he regularly attends the annual general meetings together with his wife who is also a valuable personal supporting member to us.

We express our sincere thanks to a deserving member for his years of commitment. 65th Ordinary General Meeting of the members

On 5th June 2014 in Munich