On Thursday, before the opening ceremony, the Leopoldina Senate will elect a new President. The person chosen will take over the role from Gerald Haug, the XXVII President of the Leopoldina, in February 2025.
Rainer Robra, Head of the State Chancellery and Minister for Culture of Saxony-Anhalt will give a welcoming address. Before the Annual Assembly addresses the origin of life from various scientific perspectives, Professor Dr Thomas Zurbuchen will give a keynote lecture that broadens our horizon all the way into outer space. The Swiss-American physicist and former Scientific Director of NASA’s lecture is titled “Whispers from Other Worlds: NASA’s Search for Life in the Cosmos.” The evening lecture will also consider potential life in the cosmos: the Swiss astronomer Professor Dr Didier Queloz will talk about the search for planets that revolve around a star outside our solar system. The astronomer received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the first exoplanet.
As part of the opening ceremony, the biochemist Georg Hochberg will be awarded the “ZukunftsWissen – the Early Career Award from Leopoldina and Commerzbank-Stiftung”. He studies the evolution of the structure and function of proteins that exist today. On Friday, Hochberg will give a lecture on his research.
In addition, the Cothenius Medal 2024 will be awarded to Leopoldina Member Roger Goody for his lifetime of scientific achievement. The biochemist discovered fundamental biological mechanisms involved in metabolic processes and thus made an important contribution to the study of cancer, as well as eye and brain diseases.
The long-serving Vice-President of the Leopoldina Gunnar Berg will receive the Medal of Merit for his exceptional, decades-long voluntary work for the Academy.
In the Friday sessions, experts from the natural sciences and humanities will give lectures about where life begins, how it might have originated, and whether, like a law of nature, life automatically occurs under certain conditions. For example, the US astronomer Laura Kreidberg, who works with the James Webb Space Telescope as part of her research, will talk about the search for atmospheres on rocky planets. The astronomer and Harvard Professor Dimitar Sasselov will present early Earth geochemical models. The chemist Claudia Bonfio will speak about her research into primitive cells. She studies how the first cells may have arisen from inanimate matter. The microbiologist Christa Schleper will explain how microorganisms developed into complex life forms. The philosopher Christof Rapp will explain how the origin and beginning of life has fascinated philosophers as far back as Ancient Greece.
The chemist Thomas Carell and the astrophysicist Thomas Henning are in charge of scientific coordination of the Annual Assembly 2024.
This event is open to all interested parties, is free of charge, and will also be livestreamed. Lectures are held in English and simultaneously translated into German.