Wilfried Andrä born in Weimar in 1923 received his physics PhD from the University of Jena in 1957. In 1969 he was appointed professor at the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin. His field of work was solid state magnetism (domains, thin films, information storage, high temperature superconductivity, micromagnetism). After his retirement his main interest moved to the application of magnetism in medicine. Wilfried Andrä is author or co-author of more than 130 publications in international scientific journals and several review articles.

Hannes Nowak was born in Weinsberg, Germany, in 1948. He received his physics PhD from the University of Wroclaw, Poland, in 1973 and finished his doctoral thesis in SQUID application at the University of Jena in 1980. He qualified as professor in 1989 and became a specialist in biomagnetism (SQUID and instrumentation, shielding, noise reduction, medical applications and magnetic source imaging). Hannes Nowak is the author or co-author of more than 50 refereed journal publications, 75 conference proceeding articles and more than 110 posters.