The Photography of Jörg Langowski #EMBLGR50
In honour of EMBL Grenoble’s 50th anniversary, we’d like to share some of Jörg Langowski’s photography which beautifully captures the near-decade he spent at EMBL Grenoble. These images were transferred to the archive as part of our collection drive last year.
Jörg Langowski was born in Husum, northern Germany, and studied biochemistry at the university of Hanover before heading to Seattle for his PhD thesis and postdoctoral training, where he worked on protein-DNA interactions.
In the years following his studies he became interested in biophysics, an interest which led him to a role at EMBL Grenoble, whose focus on structural biology gave him the opportunity to use biophysics and modelling approaches to understand chromatin conformational dynamics and DNA.
Jörg spent the next 9 years at EMBL, first as a scientific staff member, and later serving as a Group Leader. In 1994, he was appointed Professor at the University of Heidelberg and Head of the Biophysics of Macromolecules Division at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ).
His research encompassed diverse aspects of DNA and chromatin dynamics, employing a combination of light scattering, neutron scattering, fluorescence microscopy, and molecular modelling.
Langowski passed away in 2017 at the age of 61, less than a month after a chromatin meeting he organised with fellow scientist Tamar Schlick. Schlick writes: “There Jörg was the center of the meeting, encouraging and advising the young people, talking with everyone, and arranging skiing activities during the free afternoons and the weekend following the meeting.”
Over the course of his time at EMBL Grenoble, Jörg comprehensively captured what life at the site was like. His photographs cover social events, his scientific work, and the frequent collaborations between EMBL and the other scientific organisations.
In his obituary for Langowski (in which he is photographed with the camera with which he probably took these pictures), EMBL colleague Christoph Müller writes: “He maintained a large network of local, national and international scientific collaborators and friends”, and maintained a deep affection for EMBL long after he had left the organisation.
In 2024, the EMBL archive engaged in a collection drive to mark EMBL’s 50th anniversary. The communications team at EMBL Grenoble kindly transferred almost 1000 images which document the history of the site, and 27 of Langowski’s photographs were amongst them.
Considering the impact Jörg Langowski had on EMBL’s history and community, we feel a deep responsibility to ensure they are preserved for the future, and that they are made available to the public, and are pleased to do so now.
