Department dissertation prize for Leon Lettermann and Georg Schwefer
14.10.2026
Leon Lettermann and Georg Schwefer have received the dissertation prize of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The prize is supported by the Wilhelm und Else Heraeus Foundation. It was presented on 7 October during the 57th Heidelberg Physics Graduate Days, immediately before the Hans Jensen Lecture.
Leon Lettermann completed his doctorate at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, in the Physics of Complex Biosystems group led by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schwarz. His thesis is about how malaria parasites get around. They have neither legs nor flagella; they glide. And exactly how they glide depends on their shape and on flows across their own surface. Lettermann developed a geometrical theory for this and showed that the handedness of the parasites determines their pattern of motion. The work was done together with the group of Friedrich Frischknecht and within the DFG priority programme "Physics of Parasitism".
Georg Schwefer completed his doctorate at the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics under Prof. Dr. Jim Hinton. His thesis, "Studying Galactic TeV Gamma-ray Emission on the Smallest and Largest Scales", takes
on the gamma-ray sky of the Milky Way from two opposite ends: individual sources at the smallest scale, and the diffuse emission that fills the entire Galaxy at the largest. These photons are produced where cosmic rays run into gas and radiation fields. Unlike the charged particles themselves, whose paths are bent by magnetic fields, the photons travel straight, and so they point back to where the particles came from. Schwefer is now a postdoc in the same department, continuing to work on the diffuse emission in the HAWC/SWGO group.
The prize was awarded by a jury chaired by Prof. Dr. Astrid Eichhorn (Institute for Theoretical Physics), together with Prof. Dr. André Butz (Institute of Environmental Physics), Prof. Dr. Ralf Klessen (Institute for
Theoretical Astrophysics), Prof. Dr. Klaus Reygers (Physics Institute) and Prof. Dr. Belina von Krosigk (Kirchhoff Institute for Physics).
The Department of Physics and Astronomy congratulates them both warmly.
