Our C. and O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research hosts the Vogt Collection, the Vogt Archive, as well as several brain section collections. The Vogt Archive comprises a brain and brain section collection as well as the estate of the researcher couple Cécile and Oskar Vogt. The Vogt estate consists of about 70,000 individual pages and includes the institute's files as well as patient records and scientific and private correspondence. In addition, there is a photo archive, a library with about 2,000 book volumes, and a collection of about 20,000 scientific offprints. The collections of Cécile and Oskar Vogt are stored in the Brain Research Institute on about 300 square meters. The Vogt Archive also houses other collections, including those of Dr. Heinz Stephan, Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl Zilles and the current director of our institute, Prof. Dr. Katrin Amunts. The collections are stored in the Institute for Brain Research on over 500 square meters.
The use of the private archive and the collections for scientific purposes is possible after submitting a user request. Please contact our team regarding this. A lead time of four weeks is assumed. The archive is not open to the public.
Inquiries by e-mail to vogt-archiv@uni-duesseldorf.de
The Julich Brain Atlas and the “Telematic Society”
“Between Image and Language – Thinking in the Telematic Society” is the title of the lecture by Professor Katrin Amunts on Tuesday, November 25, 2025, at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts in Düsseldorf. The background is the utopia of a “telematic society,” conceived by media philosopher Vilém Flusser more than forty years ago. In such a society, human and technical communication systems are inseparably intertwined. According to this utopian vision, a world so thoroughly digitalized would itself digitalize human thought and radically transform the symbols of human exchange.
The event begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Academy’s headquarters, Palmenstraße 16, 40217 Düsseldorf. Registration: anmeldung@awk.nrw.de .
Please find further information on their website.
Why two pioneers of brain research never received the Nobel Prize
A new article in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy examines the scientific legacy of Cécile and Oskar Vogt. Their joint work shaped modern brain research—yet they never received the Nobel Prize, despite numerous nominations. Authors Nils Hansson, Heiner Fangerau, Fabio De Sio, Ursula Grell, and Katrin Amunts draw on archival sources from the Nobel Forum in Sweden and the Vogt Archive in Düsseldorf to understand why the research couple was nominated repeatedly over decades, yet the Nobel Prize Committee always decided otherwise. The article also reflects on how the Vogts' work lives on in modern neuroscience. The article was written in collaboration with researchers from the C. u. O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, the Vogt Archive, and the Institute for the History, Theory, and Ethics of Medicine at Düsseldorf University Hospital.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroanatomy/articles/10.3389/fnana.2025.1679993/full
Nils Hansson, Heiner Fangerau, Fabio De Sio, Ursula Grell and Katrin Amunts (2025). Pioneers of modern brain research—Cécile and Oskar Vogt and the Nobel Prize. Front. Neuroanat. 19:1679993. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnana.2025.1679993
