In 1976, the German scientists Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann developed the patch clamp technique at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, West Germany. This revolutionary method allowed researchers to measure the tiny electrical currents flowing through individual ion channels in cell membranes, revealing the fundamental electrical mechanisms by which nerve cells communicate. The patch clamp, developed in Gottingen, provided an unprecedented window into the electrical machinery of life at the molecular level and earned its inventors the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The patch clamp's revelation that the electrical activity of the brain arises from millions of tiny ion channels, each conducting minute electrical currents through cell membranes, provided a stunningly detailed scientific picture of the physical basis of thought and feeling. This discovery, that consciousness itself is built from tiny electrical events at the molecular level, has profoundly influenced contemporary poetry's engagement with consciousness, mind, and the relationship between the physical brain and the immaterial experiences of love, grief, and wonder that poetry seeks to express. Gottingen's tradition of scientific excellence, which also produced the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's close friend and correspondent, connects this breakthrough to a long interweaving of German scientific and literary culture.