Reiner Haseloff, Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, and Sabine Döring, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will give welcome speeches to open the assembly on Thursday. In the opening lecture, science historian and Leopoldina Member Lorraine Daston discuss laws of nature. The evening presentation will be given by musicologist Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen on “The exception as the rule. Beethoven and the legalities of musical freedom.”.
During the opening of the assembly, the Cothenius Medal 2023 will be awarded to Leopoldina Member Jürgen Troe for his lifetime of scientific achievement. The physician made a significant contribution to understanding the molecular foundation of reaction processes with his analysis of chemical reactions and description of large reaction systems such as combustion processes and reactions in the atmosphere.
On Friday, the Annual Assembly’s four specialist sessions will look at various aspects of rules and regularities in the natural, human and social sciences. Speakers include Leopoldina Member Magnus Striet, a fundamental theologian exploring various religious laws, and the mathematician Hélène Esnault who will talk about the concept of “right” and “wrong” in mathematics. The interaction of laws and conventions in everyday life are the focus of the speech by Ursula Rao, ethnologist. In her presentation “Observations on legal gender order”, the legal scholar Anna Katharina Mangold looks at the connection between nature and the law.
The scientific coordination of the Annual Assembly 2023 has been taken over by the Romance scholar Andreas Kablitz, Senator of the Section Cultural Sciences, the physicist Konrad Samwer, and the legal scholar and former President of the German Federal Constitutional Court Andreas Voßkuhle.