Bernhard Weßling

Bernhard Wessling, born in 1951, holds a doctorate in chemistry and is a successful entrepreneur. In his main profession as a chemist, he conducted both basic and applied research and, with his company, introduced the "organic metals" he discovered to the market in several products. The most successful application so far is in the production of printed circuit boards and here for the most part in China. Therefore, he lived and worked there for more than 13 years until 2018, learned to speak Chinese during this time, this finally in such a way that he could communicate with his customers in a business and technical way. His basic research led him deep into non-equilibrium thermodynamics, to which he eventually made important contributions himself.

Already as a teenager, he was attracted to nature. More than 30 years ago, he began observing cranes in his free time in the Duvenstedter and Hansdorfer Brook on the northern edge of Hamburg and organized crane protection there for several years. He developed a novel method of voice analysis and can thus recognize cranes individually and for years. Due to his surprising research results, he has long been considered an internationally sought-after crane expert and was involved in the largest and most complex reintroduction project of the extremely endangered Whooping Cranes in North America to date. He is an avid bird photographer (which did not let him go even in China), has been playing soccer regularly as a goalkeeper since childhood, has completed almost 600 dives as a scuba diver, including as a member of a research expedition to the largest atoll in the world, Aldabra Atoll (Seychelles), where the recovery of corals after coral bleaching was studied. He enjoys playing the piano in the evenings.