At the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen, a team headed by electrical engineer and mathematician Karlheinz Brandenburg develops the MP3 process for compressing audio data, which is nowadays standard throughout the world.

Nine years after the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance effect, which led to the breakthrough of gigabyte hard drives, the German Peter Grünberg and the Frenchman Albert Fert are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The European Patent Office honours Heidelberg physicist Josef Bille, the inventor of the eye laser, for his lifetime achievement. With almost 100 patents, Bille paved the way for present-day eye surgery using lasers.

Stefan Hell, a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, together with two US researchers receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing high resolution fluorescence microscopy.

The Joint Science Conference involving the Federal and state governments resulted in a resolution on a package of measures to give a definitive boost to research and teaching in Germany: With the “Future Contract for Strengthening Study and Teaching”, the “Innovation in Higher Education Teaching” agreement, and the continuation of the “Pact for Research and Innovation”, the donors aim to invest more than 160 billion euros over the next ten years.

Less than a year after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the USA and the EU issue initial approvals for a vaccine against the virus. The vaccine was developed by the German Biontech firm, working in collaboration with Pfizer. The vaccine saves millions of human lives.