Ernst Pöppel studied psychology and biology and received his PhD degree 1968 in Innsbruck (Austria). As PostDoc he did some neurophysiological work on the visual system at a Max-Planck-Institute in Munich. Then at MIT he discovered with colleagues a phenomenon now known as “blindsight”. He got a habilitation for Sensory Physiology in a Medical Faculty and another habilitation in Psychology in a Faculty of Science. In 1976 he became professor for Medical Psychology and founded the Institute of Medical Psychology at LMU Munich, Germany. From 1992 until 1997 he served in a semi-political position as Board Member at the National Research Center Jülich (Germany) where he founded Centers for Brain Research, for Environmental Studies and for Mathematical Modeling. Back at LMU he founded the Human Science Center, an interdisciplinary institution with some 100 members worldwide. He has supervised some 200 doctoral students from more than 40 countries. His research focuses mainly on temporal processing (“time windows”), and on visual perception (the early visual pathway). Exactly 40 years ago (1979) he was drawn by serendipity into the field of “neuroaesthetics”, and did some impressive work on music, the visual arts, and poetry. Being a victim of World War II, and becoming a refugee, he has made his political motto: “Scientists are Natural Ambassadors”. Scientists are the only ones who independent of external constraints (historical tradition, cultural identity, political system, religion, or financial opportunities, and also age and gender) can pursue the path to understand “the world within us and around us”, and thus create a global “connectome”.