Marie Curie once said that “Science is about things, and not people”. While this statement is true and profound, the fruits of science are unmistakably linked to their human origins, postmodernist relativism notwithstanding. The scientists who make discoveries are human beings, and they shoulder their share of foibles and successes, petty rivalries and forthcoming generosity,…

Today I am very pleased to have the chance to moderate a press panel about Open Access at 4 p.m. Nobel Laureate Sir Harald Kroto will tell us about his efforts to improve science education with different online projects. Dr. Jason Wild, publisher of Nature Physics, will tell us, what Nature Publishing Group does for…

There have been people who resented winning the Nobel Prize. And I don’t mean they actually looked down upon it with disrespect. I simply mean that they were terrified of the rock-star status and the public celebrity aura that accompanies the receipt of the prize. When the famously taciturn English physicist Paul Dirac won the…

Who once had the opportunity to join Lindau, will never forget it and ask itself at many other conferences and meetings, why one may not succeed in creating a similar atmosphere. Most conferences are a dust-dry matter – except the evenings at the hotel bar or the special dinner. Lindau against it is a living…

Exactly one hundred years ago the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald received the Nobel prize for his work on the topic of catalysis. And as we see today his research work have really been pathbreaking: Without catalysts modern chemistry would not be possible. It is only logical, that catalysis also plays a major role in this year’s…

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a bike trip. Starting at the Rhine Falls, Europes biggest waterfall, I rode from Switzerland towards Lake Constance. For lack of a digital camera I did unfortunately not constantly take pictures of the landscape. Nevertheless there are many, many, many users on flickr who did. The lake…

Here we go again with the topics of the day. This time it was Thursday. The links lead to the german language blogsites. But you might also get a clue of what was going on today by reading this short and funny report.

Florian Freistetter was our chief of astronomy today, and blogged about the day’s astronomy lectures by laureates: 435,457,355 Stars 435,457,355 stars had to be measured for the Hubble Space Telescope to function properly. Riccardo Giacconi began today’s lecture series with the history of X-ray astronomy and the Hubble telescope. And he said that, concerning astrophysics,…

Dancing Physicists – It was around midnight, the band played “Sex Bomb,” and all were shaking. Physicists dance as long as they can. We have fact-checked this. Even after the band stopped playing, some didn’t want to leave. The get-together-evening was a lot of fun. Dancing physicist photos here.

It was a sunny day and we only saw happy people in Lindau. Here in the Inselhalle Congress Center, Countess Sonja Bernadotte started the Meeting with an opening ceremony. Personalities from the worlds of science, politics and industry took part as well.