TUM mourns loss of Wolfgang Wild

4/13/2023
Reading time 2 min.

Physicist Wolfgang Wild, TUM President from 1980 until 1986, has passed away at the age of 92. His period in office saw ground-breaking decisions such as the campaign to found the Walter Schottky Institute for Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials. Wild was later named Bavaria's first Minister of Science.

Prof. Wolfgang Wild is one of the most formative personalities in the history of TUM.

"Not only was Wolfgang Wild an outstanding researcher and teacher," says TUM President Thomas F. Hofmann. "He was also a strategically adept force in the university system and a man of wide and varied interests with a broad horizon. Continuously addressing the relationship between science and society, he was often well ahead of his time. We will remember Wolfgang Wild as a formative personality, an individual who set the course for the later development of TUM to become a University of Excellence."

During his period in office from 1980 to 1986 Wolfgang Wild demonstrated a great visionary ability in exploring future-oriented fields of research. He worked to establish a new research neutron source reactor, which went into operation in 2004 as FRM II. The founding of the Walter Schottky Institute – Center for Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials was largely the result of his efforts. Essential factors here were on the one hand the interdisciplinary character of fundamental physics and semiconductor electronics and on the other hand collaboration with corporate partners. Wild devoted particular effort to creating a more intensive research partnership between university and business than was usual at the time.

Research on atomic nuclei

Wolfgang Wild's prior experience as Dean of the TUM Department of Physics and his work in several scientific organizations qualified him well for the office of the President. Among other things, in the 1970s Wild was chairman of the structural advisory board for the University of Bayreuth and member of the German Science and Humanities Council. His work at TUM was so successful that Wild was appointed a cabinet member by Bavarian Minister President Franz Josef Strauß, serving from 1986 to 1989 as Bavaria's first State Minister for Science and the Arts, an area which had previously been part of the Ministry of Education. Wild improved material equipment at universities and strengthened research groups in order to raise them to the highest international levels.

Wolfgang Wild studied physics at LMU Munich and earned his habilitation at Heidelberg University. In 1961 he was appointed Professor for Theoretical Physics at TUM, where he led a research group focused on the microscopic structure and excitation of atomic nuclei.

Further information and links

Technical University of Munich

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