Konrad Messmer and the author were the first two residents of Walter Brendel when he moved from Nauheim to the Chirurgische Klinik ‘Nusbaumstrasse’ in Munich, and experienced the change to the newly founded Institute of Surgical Research in the sheltered Department of Surgery. They succumbed – as later many others too – to the ‘horse whisperer’, the phenomenon Walter Brendel, who understood like only few teachers to rouse in the young medical doctors and students enthusiasm and craving for knowledge. After the long and partially very dry studies of medicine, he offered the possibility to become creative and take over personal responsibility in a group, a novelty at those times which had still a very hierarchical structure. Later Konrad Messmer continued this unique institute in Munich with the same high quality and in his proper ‘Badisch-Alemannisch’ mentality: straight forward and success oriented, preparing for many young colleagues the basis for an academic career, but always cherishing the same spirit of openness, tolerance and recognition of achievements, notwithstanding where they came from. For the author, those scientific activities and the learned capability to logically analyse problems, to rationalise and draw the required conclusions have become an essential part of his later clinical activities as a neurosurgeon and academic teacher. The author has always tried to mediate these aspects to his younger colleagues. Naturally, he also experienced as a young clinical resident how frustrating and demoralizing a surgical training could be when no climate of systematic support and stepwise escalation of responsibility and surgical skills existed. This was one of the reasons why he, as responsible academic teacher, inaugurated a structured training in his department [1]. The scope of such a resident training for becoming a competent surgeon and clinician always included the possibility for a research rotation of 1–2 years. At present many discussions are going on concerning the value of scientific training besides the time-consuming clinical training. The author, after many years of experience, is of the opinion that a scientific activity is not only required for formal reasons to gain a title, it is of genuine and paramount importance for an academic career. These aspects will be discussed in the following chapters.