Perhaps Thomas Boehm was also successful as a researcher because he can get enthusiastic about things that have nothing to do with his research.

For classical music, for example.

Hobby pianist Boehm also has a heart for lesser-known composers such as Mozart's contemporary Joseph Woelfl.

The professor practices his first piano concerto in his Sachsenhausen old building, not to perform, just for pleasure.

Sascha Zoske

Journalist in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Boehm also reads a lot, as he says, for example 100-year-old textbooks. “I look to see which of the questions raised have not yet been resolved.” He also likes the “poetic, stimulating style” in which these historical works are often written. Breaking away from one's own specialty, developing curiosity for what appears to be off the beaten track, being inspired by the originality, but also the errors of older thinkers: all of this can help a scientist to come up with new ideas himself.

In any case, it seems to have worked for Boehm.

In his discipline, immunology, he has achieved almost everything: He is the recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and various other awards, has received funding worth millions from the EU and is director of a department at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg for immunobiology and epigenetics.

He also honors outstanding ideas from colleagues: As Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation, he helps to decide who will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, which is awarded annually.

In recent decades, the jury has often had a lucky hand in making the selection: 25 of the 128 winners so far have also received the Nobel Prize.

A calm, unpretentious person

Boehm, a calm, unpretentious person, is a little proud of this record. It has become "almost a sport" to "look out" for possible Nobel Prize candidates with the Board of Trustees. The Ehrlich Prize is one of the internationally recognized "indicator prizes that pave the way to Stockholm". This is precisely why Boehm would like to see more high-ranking city politicians appear at the award ceremony in the Paulskirche - if it is not exactly due to the corona.

The professor refrains from making judgments about the scientific proximity of various mayors, especially since he has only been living in Frankfurt for five years, where he once studied medicine and initially specialized in pediatrics. Instead of remaining a pediatrician, he opted for theory; He came to immunology through leukemia research and moved to Cambridge University. Nobel laureate Harald zur Hausen, Boehm's predecessor at the head of the Board of Trustees, brought him to the Heidelberg Cancer Research Center; In 1998 he became Max Planck Director.

Boehm recently turned 65. His Max Planck contract is still running for three years, “then I'll be back on the job market”. Enjoying retirement together with his wife, the children's book author Andrea Hensgen, is not yet an option for him. He wants to look for something new, if possible in Europe, because of the children and grandchildren. His specialty, the evolution of the immune system, is likely to be good for some discoveries. Boehm studies the development of the acquired defense in lower and higher vertebrates, tries to "extract what is common" and to recognize what the "variations of the theme" are - after work, preferably with inspiring support from research colleagues Bach, Beethoven and Woelfl.