Anton Zeilinger’s term of office at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) ends in June. There are three candidates for his successor. Ex-Science Minister Heinz Faßmann is considered the favourite.
The Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) will elect a new president next Friday. After a pre-selection, three candidates are still in the running to succeed Anton Zeilinger at the head of the learned society.
The academy, founded in 1847 by Emperor Ferdinand I, is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. It is the largest basic-oriented, non-university research institution in Austria. As a research agency, the Academy operates 25 of its own research institutes in the humanities, cultural studies, social sciences and natural sciences, including the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and the Research Center for Molecular Medicine (CeMM). .
It has around 770 members in total. Around 1800 people work at the institutes. It is financed by three-year performance agreements that it concludes with the federal government. In the current performance period, the OeAW has a budget totaling 428.5 million euros (2021 to 2023). The term of office of the quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger at the head of the Academy ends in June. The 76-year-old experimental physicist has headed the research facility since 2013.
Geographer, chemist, philologist in the running
All of the approximately 180 real members of the OeAW are active and passive voters. To prepare Zeilinger’s successor, a selection committee made up of members of the Academy was set up in advance, headed by the biochemist and former Minister of Science Hans Tuppy. The three candidates now standing for election were suggested to the selection committee by OeAW members. You presented yourself at a meeting of the entire academy at the end of January.
Probably the best known of the candidates is Heinz Faßmann (66), who was Minister of Science until December 2021. The professor of applied geography, spatial research and spatial planning has been a member of the philosophical-historical class of the Academy of Sciences since 2000. From 2015 to 2017 he was Vice Rector of the University of Vienna. He had suspended his post as director at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research of the Academy for the time as minister.
Also in the running is the geochemist Christian Köberl (63), who has been a member of the mathematics and natural sciences class at the OeAW since 2006. There he also acts as chairman of the Commission for Geosciences. He is also deputy chairman of the commission for astronomy. From 2010 to 2020, the specialist in meteorite craters was also general director and scientific director of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. In 2008 he was appointed professor for impact research and planetary geology at the University of Vienna.
The cultural scientist, lawyer and Romanist Michael Rössner (68) also survived the preselection as the third candidate. Since 2009 he has been a member of the philosophical-historical class at the OeAW, where he heads the Institute for Cultural Studies and Theater History. His research focuses on the work of the Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello, which he translated, as well as on Renaissance and Baroque literature. Until his retirement in 2019, he held a chair in Romance Philology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.
(APA/Juwe)