Wolfgang Heckl, director-general, Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany

Wolfgang Heckl's boyhood obsession with taking apart household items like radio sets drove his parents to despair. But this curiosity proved to be the seed of a successful scientific career.

Although he turned to dissecting the most powerful and advanced microscopic tools available, this 46-year-old nanoscientist has preserved his early love for screwdrivers and soldering irons. Over the years, he has become the proud owner of a collection of antique radio sets and classic 1950s jukeboxes, all lovingly repaired, maintained and displayed in his Munich home. (see CV).

Credit: M. WAGENHAN

Heckl's scientific tinkering was nurtured by his mentor Gerd Binnig, who in 1986 won a share of the Physics Nobel Prize for developing scanning tunnel microscopy. The instrumentation allows its users to see and manipulate individual atoms and molecules.

Heckl became an early adopter of Binnig's technique, and of his pioneering spirit, when he joined Binnig's group at IBM Research in Munich as a postdoc in 1989. “I owe Binnig a lot,” Heckl says. “He really taught us to always make use of our creativity, and encouraged us to dare the unusual.”

Binnig's ethos was evident when Heckl created the first visual image of molecules of a DNA base, guanine. Heckl's microscopy-based studies, conducted with New Zealand biochemist Stephen Sowerby on the spontaneous self-assembly of molecules on a crystal lattice, have provided experimental insight into the possible origin of life. Some scientists believe that well-structured mineral layers, like nanoscale egg boxes, may have provided the ‘template’ for the first formation of DNA.

As director-general of Deutsches Museum, Germany's largest scientific museum, Heckl is returning to his roots: the museum displays a scanning tunnelling microscope like the one Binnig used in the early 1980s.

Heckl plans for modern science to be better represented. But the museum's invaluable historic exhibits will remain its main attraction. Heckl can continue to indulge his interest in what he now calls ‘techniquities’ — a mix of technology and antiquities such as the experimental equipment used to discover fission in 1938. But now he needn't worry about parental repercussions.