On the death of Prof. Dr. Henning Scheich

After reunification, he became the founding director of what is now the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg and, with great enthusiasm and political skill, built up a highly visible center for modern neuroscience around the institute. He was one of the founding fathers of the Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences in Magdeburg and worked intensively to promote broad-based cooperation with Otto von Guericke University.

Thanks to his strategic initiatives, magnetic resonance imaging scanners for neurobiological research were installed in Magdeburg at an early stage, and the commissioning of Europe's first 7 Tesla tomograph will forever be associated with his self-experiment in front of the cameras.

As scientific vice president of the Leibniz Association from 1995 to 2003, he navigated the scientific organization through politically difficult times and exerted a formative influence on the German research landscape.

Henning Scheich was fascinated by how signals from the environment, especially acoustic information, are processed, filtered, and interpreted in the brain and shape an individual's behavior. He wanted to understand how motivation modulates our learning and memory, and how optimal learning conditions can be created.

He was a frequent contributor to the social debate on education and a vehement defender of neurobiologically based learning concepts. His credo: Learning is not only a task for research, but can also be seen as an optimistic concept for society.

Henning Scheich died in May 2025 after a long illness. We miss his charismatic and knowledgeable lectures, his enthusiasm for scientific discourse, and his strategic brilliance. He was an inspiring mentor and advisor to generations of young researchers. We will honor his memory.

The obituary was written by Prof. Dr. Constanze Seidenbecher.