In 1966, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the US. He spent a year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and earned a master's degree in biophysics. While at the Charles Stevens Laboratory at Yale University for post-doctoral work he met fellow scientist Eva-Maria Neher, whom he married in 1978 and subsequently the couple had five children – Richard, Benjamin, Carola, Sigmund, and Margret.[10]
Since 1983, he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and led the Department for Membrane Biophysics. He turned into an emeritus director of the Institute since 2011. He is also a Professor Emeritus at the University of Göttingen and a co-chair of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen[when?] .
^"Notable Signers". Humanism and Its Aspirations. American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on October 5, 2012. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
^Neher E (1992). "[6] Correction for liquid junction potentials in patch clamp experiments". Correction for liquid junction potentials in patch clamp experiments. Methods in Enzymology. Vol. 207. pp. 123–31. doi:10.1016/0076-6879(92)07008-C. ISBN978-0-12-182108-1. PMID1528115.
^Neher E, Sakmann B, Steinbach JH (July 1978). "The extracellular patch clamp: a method for resolving currents through individual open channels in biological membranes". Pflügers Archiv. 375 (2): 219–28. doi:10.1007/BF00584247. PMID567789. S2CID8035857.