This review briefly covers periods of my early life; experiences during World War II; my school education; and my period as a medical student in Bonn, Hamburg, and Düsseldorf. Mainly emphasized is my scientific career after finishing my medical internship and periods as a postdoc at the Institute for Microbiology in Düsseldorf and the Virus Laboratories of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and as Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Virology in Würzburg, Germany. Subsequent appointment as chairman of the newly established Institute of Virology, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, in a similar position at the University of Freiburg, and then for 20 years as scientific director of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg, are discussed, covering the scientific developments during these periods. The emeritus period since 2003 was particularly exciting, leading to the discovery of autonomously replicating plasmids, derived from specific bacteria, and their link to common human cancers (colon, breast, and prostate).
Keywords: Burkitt's lymphoma; EBV; HPV; autobiography; cervical cancer; nasopharyngeal cancer; plasmid-derived human pathogens.