Prof. Dr. Jürgen Köhler

Spektroskopie weicher Materie

Phone: +49 (0)921 / 55-4000
Fax: + 49 (0)921 / 55-4002
E-mail: juergen.koehler@uni-bayreuth.de
Room: 2.1 01 463 (NW II)

Curriculum Vitae

Jürgen Köhler studied Physics at the University of Düsseldorf (Germany). He obtained his Ph.D in 1990 in the group of Prof. D. Schmid for the study of excitons in organic solids by high-resolution laser spectroscopy. In the same year he joined the group of Prof. J. Schmidt at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) as a postdoc where he stayed until 1999. Together with Jan Schmidt and Edgar Groenen he started to design an experiment to perform magnetic-resonance spectroscopy on individual molecules. In 1993 he was among the first to report a successful experiment of this kind and in 1995 this culminated in the first detection of the hyperfine interaction between a single electronic spin and an individual nuclear spin. This work laid the foundation for his "Habilitation" in Düsseldorf in 1997. Subsequently, he started to apply the single-molecule techniques to biological objects. In cooperation with Dr. T.J. Aartsma from the Biophysics Department in Leiden he proved that it is possible to detect the electronic spectra from individual pigment-protein complexes. In 1999 he accepted an offer for an associate professor position (C3) at the University of Munich which he left in 2000 for a chair in experimental physics (C4) at the University of Bayreuth. In 2002 he received the offer to become the head of the Biophysics Department at the University of Linz (Austria) which he denied in 2003. For the single-spin activities he was awarded several scientific prizes among which the Gustav-Hertz Prize of the German Physical Society (1996) and a Heisenberg-fellowship by the German Science Foundation (1997-1999). His current interests deal with optical laser spectroscopy of (organic) condensed matter in general and molecular aggregates and (bio-) polymers in particular.

Research Areas

The objective of the research group of Jürgen Köhler is the characterisation of the electronic structure of soft-condensed matter, in particular (bio-) polymers and organic macromolecules. The methodology is strongly focussed on optical spectroscopy with emphasis on single-molecule techniques. The group disposes over several setups for laser spectroscopy covering a broad spectral range both continous and pulsed in time. A major aim of the research is to unravel the mutual relationship of geometrical- and electronic structure and its influence on the photophysical properties.