100 Years of Giesekus: Beyond science—The person behind the research

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Hanswalter Giesekus, his personality and biography shall be given attention within the commemorative publication “100 Years of Giesekus.” Who was the scientist as a human being? What motivation drove his research? What were his interest and meaning in life? The authors, two of the six children of the scientist, show their father to be a multifaceted person, whose ideal was the “universal scholar” at the beginning 20th century. Besides his passion for rheology, he was deeply interested in other areas of physics—especially astronomy—as well as theology, literature, history, music, and art.