Prof. Dr. rer. hum. biol. habil. Hans Strasburger

I started my scientific journey in 1976 at the Munich Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. My first project involved psychophysiology and cybernetic modelling, using an analogue computer to model the influence of respiration on the human heart rate. Soon, however, my interests shifted to visual perception in its many facets – a field that has remained my scientific home ever since. In the 1980s, we combined visual evoked potentials with visual psychophysics to objectively measure contrast sensitivity and visual acuity. Later, I studied peripheral vision and in particular visual crowding, which turned out to be the principal limitation of visual clarity when ‘seeing sidelong’ – much more important than visual acuity. Peripheral vision plays a crucial role in brain lesions, functional brain mapping, visual attention, traffic safety, reading, and sports. Among the more unusual studies was that of a blind patient with multiple personalities who "learned to see", which attracted wide attention.

More recently I have developed a fascination with nineteenth-century vision research. I have explored Ewald Hering’s work on hyperacuity and Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann’s contributions to the foundations of perception, including his early analysis of the eye's nodal point. A version of his diagram on crossing rays in the eye appears in many modern textbooks. Looking further back, James Jurin described crowding phenomena as early as 1738, while Alhazen investigated peripheral vision in the eleventh century.

Throughout my career, I have been fascinated by the interplay between fundamental mechanisms of vision, their clinical implications, and their historical development.

Publications: https://hans-strasburger.userweb.mwn.de/pub.html