 With the subsequent appointment of Karl Julius Ullrich in 1967 and finally Hermann Passow in 1968 as new directors of the institute, the management of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics also developed away from the classic one-director institute to a more modern board of directors.The main focus of research was (and still is) the investigation of the cell membrane and its building blocks, the membrane proteins (and especially the transport proteins).The cell membranes and the proteins were and are being investigated using the most modern physical methods available at the time, including

- X-ray crystallography

- high-resolution electron microscopy

- Spectroscopy

This development was initiated, especially after the retirement of Passow and Ullrich in 1993 and Schlögl in 1996, by the appointment of a new generation of directors, in 1987 by Hartmut Michel (Dept.