Thursday, May 07, 2009

The 2009 Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


It is a great privilege for me to be invited to live-blog and write about the 2009 Lindau Nobel Prize Winners meeting in the scenic Bavarian town of Lindau, Germany. Since 1951, dozens of Nobel laureates have been joined every year by about 500 carefully chosen students from around the world for a full week of informal discussions, seminars, lunches and lectures where students and Nobelists mingle with each other and one can find at least one laureate on every square foot of the floor no matter what direction he looks.

This year's focus is on chemistry and an august list of no less than 22 Nobel Prize winners in the subject is going to gather in this scenic town. I am honored to be invited because of my background in chemistry and blogging and relish the opportunity like nothing else. I am supposed to be on a small team of 7 journalists and bloggers blogging the event for scienceblogs.com and scienceblogs.de. Along with Matthew Chalmers who is an editor and writer for several publications like New Scientist and the Times, I will largely be responsible for writing about the event in English for Scienceblogs.com. The writing will include both general observations about the meeting as well as descriptions of the talks and seminars. Hopefully I can bring it all together.

Nobel laureates have long been a particular interest of mine. People interested in this kind of a thing collect Nobel statistics like sports and stock market statistics; it was only when exploring facts about youngest, oldest, tallest, most awarded, famous father-son duos, and most neglected non-winners that I realised the allure of cricket or sensex figures.

Calling the list of scheduled speakers at Lindau stellar is a futile and redundant effort because every one of them has won the highest honor in his or her field. Many of the names are familiar and not only have I long admired these people, but I have even directly and indirectly used their work in my own research, as have thousands of scientists and students around the world. Now we will all experience a connection to our work like no other.

In any case, this is as magnificent a concatenation of minds as you can expect to find and I am immensely looking forward to it. The meeting is going to be held from June 28 - July 3. 22 Nobelists in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. It does not get better than this. I will naturally keep on updating.

Labels: , , ,

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's great! India sends a small contingent of students (Doctoral, Masters and Undergrads) to this meeting.. Hope you will report on interactions with them too.

11:20 AM  
Blogger Vivek Gupta said...

Congratulations!! I met a Nobel Laureate once, and was ecstatic. You are probably going to meet dozens of them, the feeling must be akin to a hungry man invited to a sumptuous buffet.

Also congratulations on your graduation. Where are you moving (moved?)?

1:31 PM  
Blogger Wavefunction said...

Hi Vivek
Thanks. Your analogy is indeed apt! I am moving to NJ next week for an industrial postdoc. Let me know if you are in the NE anytime.
Ashutosh

8:00 AM  
Blogger Wavefunction said...

Anon: Looking forward to meet them

8:01 AM  
Blogger Vivek Gupta said...

I have also been living in New Jersey-in Jersey City to be specific- for a while now. Which city you are moving to? May be we can meet some time.

3:43 PM  
Blogger Wavefunction said...

Good to know this! I was not aware you had moved to NJ. I will be in North NJ near Bridgewater. We should definitely meet.

7:55 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home