In memory of Martin Kalbe

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology is mourning its longtime employee, colleague and friend Martin Kalbe.

May 07, 2018

After a serious illness, Martin Kalbe died on May 5, 2018 at the age of only 53.

"The death of Martin Kalbe deeply shocked us", says Managing Director Arne Traulsen, speaking for the entire staff of the institute. "Martin Kalbe was a great scientist, colleague and person. He has supported our institute on many levels for decades. For this we are deeply grateful to him. Our compassion goes to his family and relatives."

Martin Kalbe's strong and outstanding personality motivated and supported doctoral students and young researchers in particular. He also actively supported the apprentices of the institute. His colleagues will remember him being a generous, helpful and warm-hearted person who has always been open to others, not just as a long-term member of the works council. Until recently, he was internationally active in research and inspired his fellows with his passion for science and for the topic of parasitology.

Dr. Martin Kalbe was an outstanding and established parasitologist. His research focus was on the mutual adaptations and strategies of a small fish, the three-spined stickleback, and the many different parasites that fish in the rivers and lakes of the "Holsteinische Schweiz" have to deal with. In particular, Martin Kalbe investigated the driving role of parasites in this evolutionary interplay.

Martin Kalbe was born in Wuppertal and grew up in Neustadt in Holstein. He studied biology at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, where he also obtained his doctorate in 1998 and subsequently worked for another two years as a research associate. In 2000, Martin Kalbe returned to Northern Germany. At the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, still Limnology at that time, he worked as a research assistant in the Department of Evolutionary Ecology under the direction of Manfred Milinski and later as head of the research group "Parasitology".

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