 In the Department of Molecular Sociology integrative cellular structural biology is studied by cryo-electron microscopy, biochemical and mass spectroscopic methods applied to nuclear pores, macromolecular machines that are responsible for the communication between the cell nucleus and the cytoplasm.The institute was founded in Frankfurt am Main as the "Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biophysics" in 1937.However, it had a predecessor, the "Institut für Physikalische Grundlagen der Medizin" which had been established in 1921 by Friedrich Dessauer, an admirer of Wilhelm Röntgen, who endeavored to apply radiation physics to medicine and biology.