People

Hubert S. Markl

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Hubert Markl is presently President of the Max Planck Society for the Promotion of Science in Munich, Germany, and Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Konstanz.

Born 1938 in Regensburg, he studied Biology, Chemistry and Geography at the University of Munich, where he received a doctorate in Zoology in 1962. After doing postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Rockefeller University and at the Tropical Research Station of the New York Zoological Society in Trinidad, W.I., he held academic positions at the universities of Frankfurt/M. and Darmstadt before moving on to Konstanz in 1974.

His research and teaching interests focussed on sensory physiology and on the mechanisms and evolution of social organization and communication in social insects and in small mammals.

He has also a strong and active interest in human evolution and ecology and in the conservation of biodiversity and natural ecosystems.

From 1986 to 1991 Professor Markl served as President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council), from 1993 to 1995 he was Founding President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and since 1996 to 2002 he was President of the Max Planck Society, which is the premier extra-university organization for world-class fundamental research in most areas of the natural sciences and select disciplines of the social sciences and of the humanities in Germany. Hubert Markl is elected member of numerous academies, among them The National Academy of Sciences of Germany (Leopoldina), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society (UK).