People: Hans Hoffman: living in his own 'Wild Kingdom'

Sitting outside on the patio of the psychology building at Stanford University is a welcome change for postdoctoral neurobiologist Hans Hoffman. His fifth-floor lab, where he looks at the growth rate of blue- and yellow-tinted cichlid fish, doesn't have any portals to the outdoors. "Scientists aren't supposed to look out the window," he joked.

"They're supposed to be working hard on their research."

When a stranger walks into the office, the cichlid fish seem to sense a new person, and move around in a crazy manner. This is par for the course for Hoffman.

Hoffman, 32, who has a doctorate in biology, may be just as busy here as he was back at the University of Leipzig in Germany, but his lab there certainly would have seemed a bit more eccentric. That's where he built a mini arena to house wrestling matches between Mediterranean field crickets, getting results that were published in the journal Nature.

"They're so many reason why you do stuff, and then in retrospect, you try to make sense of it," he said.

"As a student, I was interested in animal behavior and then I went in the summer to Munich and they gave me this project to look at aggression in crickets. And I thought, 'why not, sounds like fun'."

And some of it was definitely playful. When two male crickets fight, Hoffman said "it's pretty wild." They first fence with their antennae, interlock their mandibles and then move on to jumping and wrestling with each other, until one of them finally backs down and refuses to fight for a whole day. But by burying himself in the Chinese literature, Hoffman found out how handlers used to get their bugs back in the ring right away-- shake them in clasped hands, throw them up in the air and catch them a few times. Of course, the Chinese weren't trying to make sense of it, he said, just trying to get in some more gambling.

"I think the cricket must be completely freaked out. The Chinese tradition calls it punishment because he's the loser. I think that's the concept, although I don't think the cricket perceives it that way," he said.

"So I decided to try it and my colleagues all told me it wasn't going to work. But I thought, the Chinese did it for 1,200 years and I started last year, so they must know more than I do. Arrogance doesn't help."

Within weeks, the lab was full of crickets tossed into rotating tubes and small wind tunnels. What researchers discovered was that it wasn't exactly the shaking or the throwing, but rather the few seconds of air-time that made the cricket aggressive.

"We did these other things to make them stressed, and they were, but they didn't fight. Then we had the idea to make them fly, and to our surprise, it worked," he said.

While the lab thought it was interesting that the crickets regained their motivation to fight, scientists weren't quite sure how this knowledge could be applied. The way it works can get a little complicated, but Hoffman explained that flying releases a chemical signal to the brain, telling it to reset aggressiveness. This link between body movement and behavior in the critters could be used to figure out depression in human beings.

"I'm not saying the cricket will solve the problem of depression. That's outrageous and not honest," Hoffman said.

"But I hope it will give the impetus to psychologists to rethink the concept and do some experiments. Studies like these seem so far removed and basic in a way that many people on the street would say that they're a waste of tax money, but with them we can get an idea of what's going on in our own bodies."

Bespectacled and casually dressed, Hoffman has always looked at things a little differently than those around him. Born in Passau, Germany -- where the world's largest church organ sits in their famous cathedral -- Hoffman was sent to a monastery boarding school to become a Catholic priest.

"But I decided otherwise," he said.

"The priest in town, in the small village, said I was the right person. And I liked it there. It was humanistic and I thought that was good. But later I learned science."

He speaks easily in English, is fluent in German, and knows Latin, Greek, and French. The mix of instruction he got as a youngster did more than make him multilingual. It also helped him see the fusion of art and science.

"In many ways they're similar," he said.

"Some days you're creative and things are great, and then on other days, you don't want to go into the lab because you just don't think it's going to work."

Right now, Hoffman is collaborating with a Swiss artist and photographer interested in creating works that show just how science is conducted. To show where biology and art meet, the artist comes into the lab, sees what's going on, and then tries to understand the machine so he can build it from an aesthetic perspective.

"Look, I can tell you how we do science, the great story all about reason, thinking and smart people or I could tell you the crazy story about the interesting and random stuff, or I could tell you to come in and see," Hoffman explained.

"But when he designs art work, and when you look at it, there is such an immediate contact to how science works. Still, science is not about knowing everything. I probably don't know any more than you do."

When Hoffman finally has a tenure position, and enough money, he'd like to put together workshops that will let biology and art students meet and trade ideas. But for now, he is a postdoctoral researcher -- still thought by science to be in training -- and paid accordingly.

"Postdocs are slaves," he said.

"I'm living here on a pretty meager salary. People say that I have a PhD and so I must make six figures, and I tell them no way. We're not starving but we don't have two cars or a cottage in Tahoe. I don't have any stock options."

Hoffman lives in North Fair Oaks, with his wife Annette and their three children. His job only gets tiresome when, like last week, his work keeps him on campus until 2 a.m. Aside from his work with African cichlid fish, looking at how their growth patterns and how the social environment influences the brain, he's also busy getting grants in order.

"It's difficult, because you're not only expected to produce results, but as scientists, you're urged to exploit yourself. In creative professions this happens," he said.

"But in a way I'm not only exploiting myself but also my family. I'd like to spend more time with them and I'm trying to balance it all. But I am very happy with my situation."

Hoffman plans on becoming even more content in the coming months. He's working on a project for his daughter's middle school, and this summer he'll head off for a fellowship at the well-known Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, where he'll be able to work on whatever he finds interesting.

"Science is 95 percent routine and tedious and 5 percent thinking-- if you're lucky," he said.

"I guess I'm just lucky."

--Heather Wax

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