Obituary for Fritz Melchers

27.4.1936 – 24.2.2025

On February 24, the immunologist Prof. Dr. Georg Friedrich (Fritz) Melchers died at the age of 88. Fritz Melchers was an outstanding scientist who made significant contributions to immunology as a researcher and research organizer.

His research included the development of cells of the acquired immune system—he identified precursors and developmental stages of B lymphocytes, analyzed their genetics and discovered the "surrogate light chain", an important building block of B lymphocyte development.

For more than 20 years, Fritz Melchers was the director of the Institute of Immunology in Basel. The Institute was a hub for young researchers and produced dozens of scientists who shaped the field of immunology worldwide in recent decades. Nobel laureates Georges J. F. Köhler, Niels K. Jerne and Susumu Tonegawa, as well as the current president of the European Research Council, Maria Leptin, all worked at the institute. Until its closure in 2001, Melchers shaped the institute as a place of intensive scientific exchange and the development of new research ideas.

In 2003, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology as a Senior Research Group Leader. Here he headed the Lymphocyte Development Research Group. Following his time as a Senior Research Group Leader, he continued to work with the Institute as a Max Planck Fellow from 2008 to 2016.

Fritz Melchers was also closely associated with the German Rheumatism Research Centre, which is located in the same building as the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. He was a co-founder of the Research Centre and continued to support it in an advisory capacity in the years that followed. After completing his Max Planck Fellowship, he led the Lymphocyte Development research group there as a senior scientist from 2017 until his death.

His legacy lives on in the many scientists he inspired and supported, and in the advances he made in immunology.