Terahertz pioneers: A series of interviews with significant contributors to terahertz science and technology

This month we bring you a very special Pioneers´ article that includes not one, but two, long term contributors to THz science, Manfred and Brenda Pruden Winnewisser. This Far-Infrared Spectroscopy team, perhaps better characterized as a family dynasty, also included the renowned younger brother of Manfred, Gisbert Winnewisser (National Research Council of Canada, Max Planck Institute for RadioAstronomy, Bonn, Germany, and University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany), who sadly, passed away in March 2011. What is remarkable about these individuals is not just their contributions to THz science, but their pure love of research, which has sustained and nurtured them through five decades, and which keeps them buoyant, excited and still working long past the age when most of us would have retired from the stress and competition of a career in science. In addition, the adversities which they had to overcome; Manfred in surviving post-war Germany, forcibly displaced from his family home, at an early age and without a father, and Brenda, who endured in a career that was so severely gender-biased that she effectively was not allowed to compete for a permanent academic appointment in her country of residence. Their stories are a testament to the triumph of will over circumstance and a touchstone that all of us can emulate.