Bamberg received his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Basel in 1971, and a habilitation in biophysical chemistry from the University of Konstanz in 1976. He was a Heisenberg fellow from 1979 to 1983, when he became head of an independent working group at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main. In 1988, he became an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, which named him a full professor of biophysical chemistry in 1993, and professor emeritus in 2009. He has also been a director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics since 1993, and a senior investigator at the Cluster of Excellence Frankfurt (CEF) since 2008.^[1][2][3]

Bamberg's research focuses on channelrhodopsins. With Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann, who were attempting to identify the proteins that allow Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a green alga, to move toward light using photocurrents, Bamberg was part of the first research team to isolate and characterize channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2). “We had a hard time trying to convince people that it was true,” he told Nature later, but "Before we published the first papers [showing that algal proteins could generate currents in eukaryotic cells], we applied for a patent where we gave to our fantasy a free run about the possible applications of channelrhodopsins on electrically excitable cells, including some biomedical applications.”^[4] In 2005, Bamberg and Nagel worked with Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, and Feng Zhang to demonstrate that this light-gated channel could be used as an actuator to control neural activity, helping to lay the foundations for the study of optogenetics.^[5]

• 1987 Boris Rajewsky Preis für Biophysik
• 2009 Stifterverbandspreis des Stifterverbands für die Deutsche Wissenschaft
• 2010 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences, with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel^[6]
• 2010 Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize for Technological Innovation
• 2011 Member of the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences^[7]
• 2012 K. J. Zülch-Preis der Gertrud Reemtsma Stiftung, für neurologische Grundlagenforschung (basic neuroscience), with Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel, and Karl Deisseroth^[8]
• 2013 The Brain Prize from the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation, with Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel^[9]
• 2019 Citation Laureate from the Web of Science Group^[10]
• 2019 Rumford Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, with Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel^[11][12]

• Ernst Bamberg Hot Topics presentation: Optogenetics and hybrid-optical control of cells
• German Wikipedia page