Tuesday night I had the great pleasure of participating in an academic dinner upon invitation by Angela Bittner from the German Helmholtz Association. I am positive that the three hours we ate, drank and talked science will become one of the lasting memories of the Lindau meeting not just for myself, but also for the five young Helmholtz researchers and three Nobel laureates. One major reason for the success of the dinner was that we had two important ingredients in place:
- a separate room for dinner (meaning no background noise or people walking around) with a group small enough (15 people) that we could sit around one table
- a Nobel Prize winner (Torsten Wiesel) insisting on us having a single dinner conversation as a large group
And of course the food at Weinstube Frey was excellent. There were only two small problems, so I couldn't give the evening a perfect 10.0. The restaurant room was very hot with little ventilation, and there was not a single women among the young researchers and laureates (we briefly talked about this during dinner).
The following three laureates had joined us for the meting:
- Carlo Rubbia (76 years old) shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 for his "decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction".
- Torsten Wiesel (86 years old) shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1981 for his "discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system".
- Walter Kohn (87 years old) earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1998 for his "development of the density-functional theory"
After brief introductions and a welcome Spritz drink, Torsten Wiesel suggested that we would get the most out of the dinner if we had a big group discussion. And that the young researchers from Helmholtz should present their research projects.
Tobias Frauenrath is an engineer and PhD student at the Max Delbrück Center of Biomedicine in Berlin. He is trying to improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as used to study disease in patients. We talked about the physical limits of this technology, e.g. the maximal possible resolutions in space and time. Torsten Wiesel was very interested in the applications of this technology in neuroscience, and we also talked about functional MRI.
Alexander Floßdorf is a working at DESY in Hamburg on the construction of the CMS silicon tracker for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Walter Kohn asked him what it would mean if the existence of the Higgs Boson particle was proven. It would resolve many inconsistencies in current theoretical physics, and would probably mostly confirm current thinking, But it is still possible that it also open up many new questions. We then discussed the role of an individual scientist in such a large projects involving 1000s of scientists. Carlo Rubbia thinks that physicists are in general happy doing research in large cooperations, and that research in the life sciences is heading in the same direction. Walter Kohn disagreed and thinks that there is still a role for the individual scientist in small research groups.
Matthias Fehr works at the Helmholtz Center for Materials and Energy in Berlin. He wants to improve photovoltaic cells and studies the influence of light on silicon aging. We talked about ways that the efficiency of photovoltaics can be improved, e.g. increasing light density or using organic cells. The discussion than moved on to the Desertec project that wants to build a large area of solar thermal collectors (where solar energy does not directly produce electricity as in photovoltaics, but heats oil or gas) in the Sahara. Both Carlo Rubbia and Walter Kohn had a lot to say about this topic, e.g. the problem of transporting electricity from the Sahara to central Europe, and the initiatives by the U.S. and China in this field.
Georg Gasteiger works at the German Research Center for Environmental Health. He is interested in T cell responses to vaccination against viruses, and why the immune response to vaccination is often different in developing countries where a large percentage have chronic infections. The big three infections in the developing world are AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, and efforts to develop vaccines for these diseases have until now not gone very far. Carlo Rubbia asked if climate change will reintroduce Malaria in Europe. He was reassured that Malaria doesn't pose a threat to Europe because the spread of the disease would also requires other conditions (humidity, poor sanitary conditions, unavailability of antimalarial drugs).
Frank Tobias is a PhD student at the Helmholtz Heavy Ion Research Center in Darmstadt. He studies the effects of heavy ion radiation on DNA damage in a tissue culture system. Heavy ions are used for the radiotherapy of cancer patients and allow a very precise application of ionizing radiation. The clinical use of this technology is still limited in Europe - such a facility has recently opened in Heidelberg (HIT) and is cooperating with the Helmholtz Center in Darmstadt. A modified technology is in wide use in Japan. A big roadblock for the wider availability of the technology is the cost of the technology. In addition, it currently can't be used for moving objects, e.g. lung tumors that move during breathing.
After desert the discussion turned to the Nobel laureates, as they were asked how the prize had changed their (scientific) life. All three of them stressed that it is not the prize that is important, but rather the joy of doing scientific work. Torsten Wiesel said he was lucky that he got paid for work he enjoyed doing anyway. And all three laureates are still working in science despite their age.
Carlo Rubbia pointed out that a study had shown that the productivity of laureates has actually declined after winning the prize, but he was quickly countered by one of the students who stressed the value of mentoring and indirect effects on other scientists.
The memorable evening ended with pictures being taken of our group. And then our laureates disappeared into the night with the rest of the group collecting their thoughts about this very special evening.
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