Professor Lohse, the GDNÄ will be 200 years old in September 2022. How will this anniversary be celebrated?
200 years: this is really a significant and wonderful anniversary. During these 200 years science has developed in an incredible way, all over the world, but particularly in Germany – and often from within the GDNÄ. We want to celebrate this special anniversary with a very special four-day anniversary conference in September: in the city where the GDNÄ was founded, Leipzig, and in the beautifully modernised Art Deco Congress Hall at the Leipzig Zoo.

Who is invited to this celebratory conference?
All members are cordially invited, plus participants in the student programme and former scholarship holders, as well as the general public for some of the events. We hope that the Federal President, the Prime Minister of Saxony, and the Mayor of Leipzig will honour us with their presence. Leading scientists from Germany and abroad, including Nobel Prize winners, will give lectures and celebrate with us. And aspiring students of science journalism as well as regional and national media will cover the conference.

As the President, you were able to choose the topic of the conference. Why did you choose “Images in Science”?
This topic has a general, but also a very personal component. You will find both aspects in the conference. Images have always conveyed central messages in and from science. Let us think, for example, of the many drawings Alexander von Humboldt made on his travels, of the spectacular photos of the North Pole MOSAiC expedition, or of the fantastic images of the space telescopes. In my own research, fascinating detailed images can be produced with new types of microscopes: images of individual biomolecules and from the innermost parts of cells and organisms. The anniversary conference will bring us up to date in this very broad spectrum of images.

Let us turn our gaze back once more. 1822 to 2022, that is a long time: how has the GDNÄ managed to last over so many years?
The two centuries of its existence are without doubt the most exciting times science has ever experienced. Never before have the developments in science, but also those that science brought to society, been so great – and this is true for the entire spectrum of the GDNÄ. Many disciplines were actually born during this time, and they have all evolved into their own specific worlds. The GDNÄ has always been at the centre of these developments, and many specialist societies have sprung from the GDNÄ, and have often become much larger than the GDNÄ itself. However, during all these years, the GDNÄ has retained some unique features.

What are these special features?
Three aspects characterise the GDNÄ and make it unique: First, the GDNÄ cultivates interdisciplinary discussions across a broad spectrum of subjects – in a way that cannot take place in specialist societies. Second, the GDNÄ runs a student programme with great potential for the future. And third, the GDNÄ addresses the general public: with its activities in science communication, via its homepage, and invites citizens of the city and its region to its meetings. We will highlight all three aspects in Leipzig.

View into the Great Hall of the lavishly renovated Gründerzeit building from 1900. The building has a total of 15 halls and rooms as well as foyers and lounges. © Leipzig Trade Fair

What will be the role of young people at the Leipzig conference?
We invite more than two hundred young people: Selected high school students from the region, former programme participants, winners of the “Jugend forscht” and “Jugend präsentiert” competitions. There will be preparatory workshops and a presentation of the results at the opening ceremony. The aim will be to define and express young people’s expectations of science. With this programme, which has been organized by Mr Mühlenhoff for many years, we want to address young people and open up paths to science for them. And, of course, also into the GDNÄ. 

The Corona pandemic has shown the importance of the dialogue between science and the public. How has the GDNÄ been involved in this issue?
The Corona pandemic has highlighted both strengths but also weaknesses of our society. The strengths include an incredible number of rapidly produced research results, including, above all, the development of vaccines in less than a year. However, it has also become clear how difficult it is to connect to the entire population, to convey research knowledge. And it has also become clear how much basic knowledge is needed for conversations about the disease and meaningful countermeasures. The GDNÄ aims to provide information about this topic on its homepage, it participated in the discussion about risk-adapted measures at an early stage and, together with science academies and research institutions, aimed to inform politicians. Some of its members participated, for example, in a symposium of the Hamburg Academy of Science on “infections and society”. Together with German science academies, we now want to increasingly devote ourselves to the follow-up and ask address two big questions: How did we as a society and how did science fare in this crisis? And what can we learn from this for the future – for future pandemics and other crises, but also for science communication? 

What role will the Corona pandemic play in the anniversary meeting?
Corona will not be the focus at the Leipzig meeting. So much has already been said about it that it did not seem to make sense to us. But RNA medicine, which has brought us the best vaccines so far and opens up completely new opportunities for innovative therapies, will be a central topic of the “Medicine” session on Sunday morning in Leipzig. 

What are your wishes for the GDNÄ in the coming years?
Of all the wishes I have for the GDNÄ, one is central: that it may continue to play an important role in the dialogue between the sciences, with the public and especially with young people. And that for 200 more years!

Chinese Academy of Sciences admits chemist and GDNÄ board member as foreign member 

Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus is Senior Professor of Physical Chemistry at Bielefeld University and former President of the Combustion Institute. She represents the field of engineering sciences on the Board of Directors of the GDNÄ. On 18 November 2021, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced that Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus had been elected as a new foreign member. The long-standing list of foreign members comprises only about 100 people in total. These include the physicist Klaus von Klitzing, the biochemist Hartmut Michel and the mathematician Martin Grötschel. The biologist Herbert Jäckle was elected at the same time as Kohse-Höinghaus.

On 23 November 2021, the former president of the GDNÄ, Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster was accepted as a foreign member of the Czech Academy of Engineering Sciences (Cena Inženýrské akademie České republiky, EACR) in Prague.  

Professor Wolfgang Wahlster from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is known in the Czech Republic as a scientific pioneer in the field of Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence. Industrial production is of great economic importance for both the Czech Republic and Germany. In both countries, industrial artificial intelligence is perceived as an innovation driver. 

For many years, Wahlster has been cooperating with Professor Vladimír Mařík in Prague, the founder of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) at the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU). Together, the two scientists have launched the Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production (RICAIP), which is funded with 50 million euros. 

The Czech Academy of Science and Engineering EACR is a partner organisation of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) and represents the Czech Republic in Euro-CASE, the European association of all academies of science and engineering.

Trust in science and research remains strong, especially in the Corona pandemic. But there are also sceptical voices. This was the result of a representative survey by Wissenschaft im Dialog (WiD), a non-profit organisation in which the GDNÄ is a co-partner.

The majority of people in Germany rely on science and research. In the current opinion poll “Wissenschaftsbarometer 2021”, 61 percent of respondents said they trust science rather or completely. This is similar to the previous survey in November 2020 (60%) and more than before the Corona pandemic began (2019: 46%, 2018: 54%, 2017: 50%).

Only in the Corona Special Surveys in April and May 2020 was the level of agreement higher, at 73 and 66 per cent respectively. 32 percent of respondents are currently undecided. This is the result of population-representative data from the Science Barometer, with which the non-profit organisation Wissenschaft im Dialog (WiD) has been surveying public opinion on science and research in Germany since 2014. Sponsors and supporters of the project are the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. The GDNÄ has supported the goals and diverse activities of WID for many years as a co-partner.

Germans’ trust in science and research has increased sharply with the Corona pandemic. © WiD

The high level of trust in science and research is also reflected in the desire for scientific policy advice. Thus, more than two thirds of the respondents (69 %) are of the opinion that political decisions should be based on scientific findings. 75 % think that scientists should speak out publicly when political decisions do not take scientific findings into account. An active interference of scientists in politics is desired by 32 percent of the respondents. Half of the respondents think that scientists should recommend certain decisions to politicians in the specific context of the Corona pandemic. 

However, it is unclear to many respondents (53 %) how policy advice on Corona works in Germany.  “People would like even more information about when and how scientific findings influence policy,” says Markus Weißkopf, Executive Director of Wissenschaft im Dialog.

What doctors and scientists say about Corona is most likely to be believed. © WiD

In the context of the Corona pandemic, trust in the statements of scientists is particularly high: 2021: 73 %, November 2020: 73 %, April 2020: 71 %. Only the trust in statements by doctors and medical staff on Corona is even higher (2021: 79 %, November 2020: 80 %, April 2020: 78 %). The statements made by representatives of authorities and agencies, journalists and politicians are trusted much less in comparison (2021: 34%, 21% and 18%). 

Despite the high level of trust in medicine and science, sceptical positions on the Corona pandemic also meet with approval. For example, 39 percent agreed somewhat or strongly with the following statement: “Scientists are not telling us everything they know about the corona virus” (19 % undecided, 40 % somewhat disagree or strongly disagree). Twenty-six percent agree with the statement that the pandemic is being made into a bigger deal than it actually is (12% undecided, 61% disagree or tend to disagree). 

“The results show that a minority doubts science – but a minority that has become louder during the pandemic,” says Prof. Dr. Mike S. Schäfer, Professor of Science Communication at the Institute of Communication Science and Media Research at the University of Zurich and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Science Barometer.