topic Research

Mission Education: the Nobel Laureates come to Lindau

Opening 61. Nobel Laureate Meetings in Lindau

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The 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting dedicated to Physics took place from 1 to 6 July 2012.

 Lake ConstanceThe Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have featured a broad thematic profile from the very beginning. In addition to specialized problems, the Lindau agenda always includes basic academic topics. Discussions of the social relevance of research is tightly bound to the Lindau Meetings and the island of Mainau, with, for example, the 1955 Mainau Manifesto or the 1961 Green Charter of Mainau which focused specifically on ecological issues nearly ten years before the first Club of Rome meeting. The response of participating laureates and students, as well as the media, towards the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the meetings over the past years has been exceedingly positive. Recent efforts to involve Laureates from neighboring disciplines have been continued this year with the invitation of chosen Laureates in the field of chemistry to participate in the physics meeting.

Until 2000, the Lindau Meetings were open to young German scientists and up to one hundred international guests, with no separate application procedure. Thanks to an initiative of former Federal President Roman Herzog, the meetings have been reoriented to create a dialogue of cultures and nations, a dialogue of generations between the foremost experts of a discipline and its promising young scientists, and finally a dialogue of disciplines among scientists with interdisciplinary perspectives. This has been made possible through the establishment of an international nomination and selection process based solely on qualification. While the Lindau Meetings in 2000 saw participants from 20 countries, this number has increased to 54 in 2005 and 65 in 2012.

Support of the BMBF has helped enable qualitative improvements to the meetings in regards to the expansion of international relationships and the improvement of academic standards. With this, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have continually gained academic significance as well as national and international visibility.

The Lindau Meetings do not fit in a standard schema of international academic conferences: they have a unique character of dialogue beyond any "self-marketing" necessity - for this reason, the programmed events, with their countless opportunities for informal exchange, play a major role.

Over a hundred journalists will be accredited for the meetings. The coverage includes articles written by the Nobel Laureates, which draw a great deal of attention. The analyses and evaluations of the Laureates during the economic meeting in 2011 were met with particular consideration - on the grounds of the financial crisis. The topics of the meetings are becoming increasingly socially relevant: they focus on climate change, demographics, innovation, and the capacity to compete. The gatherings are also consistently taking on the character of a brain-gain initiative.