Peter Schuster

Peter Schuster looks back on more than 40 years of a very successful scientific carrier. As one of the trailblazers in the field of molecular evolution, his revolutionary ideas have and still do influence the thinking of many researchers in Biology and Chemistry.

His contributions span from early work in Quantum Mechanics, over Dynamical Systems Theory and chemical kinetics to models of the evolutionary process and Systems Biology. In particular the application of chemical reaction kinetics to the molecular evolution culminated in the development of the Quasispecies model. This led to novel concepts such as minimal replication accuracy and error threshold, two important characteristics of evolving virus populations. His outstanding work together with the Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen on the Hypercycle gave, for the first time, a realistic scenario for the emergence of longer biopolymer chains in the context of the origin of life. He was one of the first researchers recognizing the importance of RNA molecules with diverse functions others than mere information transfer, at a time where the perspective on cellular life was still dominated by proteins and DNA. With his view of the RNA folding process as "realistic" model for a molecular genotype-phenotype map he introduced a physical basis for the hitherto abstract concept of evolutionary fitness.

Peter Schuster influenced the research landscape in Vienna as long term head of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry and as President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He also initiated the founding of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA).

Abroad, he was external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, and founding Director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Jena. He is a member of numerous academies including the US National Academy of Sciences and the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.

At the age of 75 years Peter's enthusiasm and passion for research is unbroken and he still publishes at the forefront of science.