08. December 2006 Helmholtz Head Office
Speech by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association, at the awards ceremony of the Teachers’ Prize on 8 December 2006
Speaking at the awards ceremony of the Karl Heinz Beckurts Foundation in Munich, the President of the Helmholtz Association, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek, stressed the importance of role models for young people. In his speech entitled “You Are Helmholtz” he went on to show how Hermann von Helmholtz can still today inspire youngsters to question and investigate natural phenomena. Mlynek presented awards to 17 teachers in acknowledgement of their outstanding commitment and dedication.
Dear Minister Gopple, dear Mr Popp,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I'm sure you remember the Du bist Deutschland! (You Are Germany!) campaign that was launched in Germany to promote a new, positive national feeling. I quote: "How can you be Albert Einstein, Claudia Pechstein or Günter Jauch? Do you need a Nobel Prize, a gold medal or a TV show? No. It's enough to be yourself and believe in yourself. To say what you think and show what you can do."
The aim of the campaign was to give us all, and young people in particular, the feeling that we can make it somehow just by being "true to ourselves". But what does that mean in real life? Can anyone honestly suggest that if you take a nice picture of your auntie today, you are likely to be as famous as Helmut Newton tomorrow? What I am getting at is that heroes of the media and sporting worlds are of very limited use in helping young people gain a realistic perspective on their own future.
What I felt was lacking more than anything in the Du bist Deutschland campaign were heroes of everyday life. There was no mention of scientists or engineers, with the honourable exception of Albert Einstein. But even where he was concerned, the matching text read: "You don't really need to know what E=mc² means!" It is a sad fact that Albert Einstein is better known for his hairstyle than for his brilliant insights into space and time.
Yet no other age has been so shaped by science as our own. But if the many surveys are to be believed, the only thing young people really want today is to stand in the spotlight. TV presenter, soccer ace, superstar and model are the career options youngsters most commonly aspire to. Technology and the sciences are not nearly as popular. But why on earth not?
I am convinced that the challenges engineers, technicians and chemists are asked to deal with are often a lot more interesting than most careers in the media could offer. The 17th internship and a vague hope of landing a job as a presenter on a TV shopping channel are not really what anyone can call much of a prospect.
What if the campaign had said: "You are Helmholtz! You think your brain is about to crack sometimes, but you grit your teeth and refuse to give up. Because you know that it all depends on you. You can help solve the great problems of our times. You can find new sources of energy, slow down climate change and conquer cancer!" Don't you think - as I certainly do - that that is what young people are really looking for? Great challenges where they can test their mettle and where their contribution really counts.
This is why - in the next 15 minutes - I will tell you a little about the great natural scientist Hermann von Helmholtz. I will also tell you something about the mission of the Helmholtz Association, a mission that is inherently attractive to young people because it is all about our future. For young people are our only resource. And we support them best if we take them seriously and challenge them!
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann von Helmholtz was born in 1821 and died in 1894. During his lifetime, Germany developed into a major centre of science. Helmholtz made a huge contribution to laying the foundations for this. Not only was he one of the most productive scientists of his day, but he also had the knack of cooperating with decision-makers from industry and politics. He was, as we would say today, a mover and shaker!
His father was a teacher of Greek and wanted his son to follow him into the classics. But Hermann wanted to become a natural scientist. Back then, a career in physics seemed as obscure as it was impecunious, and, as his parents were not affluent enough to support their son, his only option was to seek the support of the Prussian state. In those days the state paid for clever young men to train as military doctors. Young Hermann passed the entrance test, and ecstatically reported to his father that "We're forced to study until our brains crack!"
The meaning of the maxim "No pain, no gain" was immediately clear to young Hermann. By the age of 21, he had completed his doctoral thesis on nerve fibres! After that he went on to work as a surgeon at the Berlin Charité hospital. But he never stopped researching. His special interests were physiology, mathematics and physics. He assiduously published articles, the quality of which finally inspired the great Alexander von Humboldt, one of his university lecturers, to put his name forward for a professorship in Königsberg.
At the tender age of 28, Helmholtz was named an exceptional Professor of Anatomy and Physiology. Now he was finally also in a position to marry the young Olga von Velten, to whom he had been engaged for two years. He was a man of independent means, already able to found and support a family. That's quite an achievement, especially compared with today.
Helmholtz always looked deeply. As he would write later: "Young people aim straight for the heart of the matter. When I was that age, I was obsessed by the question of the mysterious nature of the essence of life." Most scientists of the time believed in a so-called Vis Vitalis, a vital force, to explain the difference between dead and living matter. After death, it was supposed that this mysterious force somehow evaporated, enabling the organism to decay. Attempts were even made to weigh the souls of the dying to see if they could track the disappearance of that force. Helmholtz took a dubious view of this theory, however, and wrote: "I felt there was something unnatural about this explanation, but it cost me a lot of time and effort to make this vague intimation of mine into an actual question."
What does this show us? What really matters is to ask the right questions! It is not very important to find the right answers to questions that are not really relevant. And here lies an endless opportunity and a rich field of activity for young people who are so naturally curious. The art of asking the right questions is one that can be acquired, and it forms the core of the individual urge to investigate.
Helmholtz's observations led him to conclude that the "vital force" was a myth, and did not exist. In the process of elaborating this conclusion, he formulated one of the first principles of thermodynamics: "Energy does not disappear." That is, so to speak, the credo of modern physics: energy cannot be extinguished, or appear from out of nowhere, but can only be transformed.
Even at the peak of his career, Helmholtz still set himself new aims: he attempted to explain the whole of physics - from mechanics to electrodynamics - from a single principle of thermodynamics, namely the principle of least action. In so doing he threw up fundamental questions, which he was unable to solve at the time. Helmholtz was the last great classical physicist, a giant of 19th century scholarship who saw far ahead into the 20th century.
Helmholtz did not limit himself to merely comprehending the phenomena he investigated. He was also always looking for possibilities to apply the knowledge he had gained. As he once put it: "Knowledge should result in action". Often very simple questions like "Why do animals' eyes glow in the dark?" would inspire him to investigate. Although this question is easy to understand, the answer takes us deep into the physiology of the eye. It led Helmholtz to comprehend the structure of the eye, and to develop an instrument called the opthalmoscope, which enabled doctors to look at the retina for the first time. This instrument has been optimised over time and is still in use today.
Helmholtz's investigations into "the sensations of tone" was equally productive. What makes the "sound" of an instrument? he asked. The New York piano builder Henry Steinway was so impressed by his results that he presented Helmholtz with a grand piano. Helmholtz also investigated the speed at which impulses are transmitted through nerve cells, and ventured into the fields of electrodynamics and geophysics. In other words, he was a truly universal scholar, a personification of interdisciplinary research.
Helmholtz was not only one of the greatest researchers of the 19th century, he also built the foundations of modern science. "Think big!" was his eternal motto. In cooperation with Werner von Siemens, who put part of his private fortune at the service of the venture, he applied to the Kaiser for permission to establish the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, the PTR. For decades to follow, this institute was the largest and most important research institute in the world. Dedicated to the science of metrology, its mission was to precisely define weights and measures for the benefit of industry.
It was in the PTR at the beginning of the 20th century that the work was done which was to inspire Max Planck to arrive at his quantum hypothesis. It is also the place where Willi Wien, one of Helmholtz's brightest students, examined blackbody radiation in 1892. Eight years later, Max Planck arrived at his famous hypothesis that light is emitted in discrete amounts - namely quanta.
This institute, which is now known as the PTB, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, is still going strong. With it, Helmholtz initiated the first top-level, non-university research institution.
Future-Oriented Research
What can Helmholtz teach us today? Three things, in my opinion:
First: to ask the right questions, or put in more abstract terms: that basic research is essential!
Second: Dare to achieve your goals. Think big!
Third: Responsibility for the whole. Knowledge is there to be applied!
That is also the mission of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, and there are very good reasons why Hermann von Helmholtz is our namesake.
With 15 large research institutes and a total of almost 25,000 employees, we are the largest research organisation in Germany. We operate large-scale facilities like particle accelerators and research vessels and investigate the basics of and links between important scientific questions, but we also aim to put the fruits of our investigations at the service of society. We want to use our findings to help tackle the challenges facing society, science and industry. We focus on six fields of research: Energy, Earth and the Environment, Health, Key Technologies, Structure of Matter and Transport and Space.
We see ourselves as Germany's national research centres with a clearly national mission:
In the field of Earth and the Environment we are monitoring climate change, a huge challenge which we cannot allow ourselves to be daunted by. With the Earth Observation System, we have set up a global infrastructure of satellites, research aircraft and other measuring instruments. We use them to survey continental plate movement, the composition of the atmosphere and the surface of the land and sea, and use this information to assess the risks of earthquakes. We also track weather patterns, deforestation, desertification and groundwater reserves across the world. Our research also directly benefits people in high-risk regions: researchers at the Helmholtz GeoForschungsZentrum in Potsdam, for example, developed the tsunami early warning system which is now being set up in the Indian Ocean.
In the field of Health, our particular focus is on widespread illnesses like cardiovascular diseases and cancer. We examine the causes and develop new approaches for therapy. Here again, basic research and application go hand in glove. Basic research on viruses, for example, resulted in an effective vaccine against cervical cancer, one of the commonest forms of cancer affecting women. And, in cooperation with physicists, bioscientists adapted a particle accelerator that enables cerebral tumours to be removed in a targeted and conservative way using accelerated carbon ions.
The subject of Energy is of particular importance to us. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the question that will be the big issue of the coming decades! About half of publicly funded energy research is conducted by the Helmholtz Association. We are developing solutions to help us break our dependency on crude oil and to slow down climate change. We are taking a two-pronged approach to this problem. On the one hand, we are working to improve existing solutions, and on the other, we are examining the basic questions. For without a real understanding of the essential processes involved, i.e. the physics behind it, we will not be able to achieve any real breakthroughs in solar-cell technology or any other new technology.
Renewable solar and biomass power are important areas of research. But we are also working on energy efficiency, for example, on making energy conversion more efficient. And we are developing innovative materials for vehicles and engines which are much lighter, yet just as stable, as those in present use. This would reduce fuel consumption. As you see, it is an area with enormous potential.
Some projects are like marathons. They require a lot of stamina, perseverance and systematic training if we are to cross the finish line. This is how I see the subject of nuclear fusion. This project aims to bring the process which powers the sun down to Earth. As a young physicist who has contributed greatly to the progress of this project told me a few days ago: "I can't imagine anything more exciting than being involved in developing a completely new energy source!"
In nuclear fusion, hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, a process which releases tremendous amounts of energy. We are working with partners from the world's leading countries to master this technology. The international test reactor ITER is now being built in Cadarache in France. Perhaps it will take us until the year 2035 to generate electricity in this reactor, and perhaps it will be 2050 before the electricity generated there is available for popular consumption from the mains. And as we all know: there is no guarantee of success, because we are researching uncharted territory. But on the other hand, we also know that nuclear fusion could be the answer we are looking for!
You are Helmholtz!
But why am I telling you all this today? The reason is simple: To inspire you with a passion for research that serves our national interests and international obligations. To make you appreciate Hermann Helmholtz, not only the scientist, but the man, too. Hermann Helmholtz asked simple, clearly formulated questions, questions which still interest young people today and could inspire them to investigate natural phenomena more closely by participating in the competition "Jugend forscht", for example. Let me reiterate some of the questions Helmholtz asked:
Why do animals' eyes glow in the dark?
Why do musical instruments sound different, depending on the wood they are made of?
Is there such a thing as a "vital force"?
Helmholtz left the ivory tower of academia. He was far-sighted and joined forces with industry and politics to ensure that the knowledge he gained was applied, and that research would make the world a better place.
Reflecting on the purpose of knowledge and its potential, Helmholtz said: "Working in the best interests of the nation, scientists seek to increase the knowledge and insights that can serve to enhance industry, wealth and the beauty of life, to improve political organisation and the moral development of each individual."
That is a very holistic, far-sighted view, and one which is more relevant today than ever before. The Helmholtz Association picks up on this tradition. We are tackling the problems of the future! In order to do this we need young people who do not shrink from difficulties, and who are prepared to dedicate themselves to very complex issues. In return we offer them great challenges and opportunities, like working with 500 people from all over the world on building a new particle accelerator, or spending the winter with a team in Antarctica to find out how species diversity is changing. Or developing new microscope technologies in the laboratory to enable us to see the atomic world with new eyes, a feat accomplished by Knut Urban's team at the Jülich Research Centre, which is to be awarded the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize for its achievements here today. These are the genuinely fascinating challenges of our time, challenges that are worth living and working for.
But there are only a very few, exceptional people who are able to develop their full potential without receiving targeted support. A lot of talent is wasted if it is not recognised and nourished. And this is where I turn to the teachers among us here today with a heartfelt thank you. You are the ones who act as mentors, you are the ones who discover hidden talents and allow them to blossom. How many young people are there who have absolutely no idea of the potential that lies within them? That they could, for example, develop metamaterials with new properties, or vaccines against dangerous viruses.
Young people are supremely important. They are the one and only real resource a country like Germany can really count on. That is why we have to work together to give the next generation of minds the best possible opportunities to flourish. Being dedicated teachers, you will presumably be familiar with the 18 School Labs run by the Helmholtz Centres, where over 40,000 young people conduct experiments every year. You are very welcome to visit us with your pupils.
And we are aiming to start earlier still. Our most recent initiative, "Tiny Tots Science Corner" is directed at teachers working in kindergartens and nursery schools. Because, as you will know, there are many wonderful experiments through which children can experience and begin to understand nature.
But talent management also means that we really support students and young researchers by giving them the space they need to develop. Equal opportunities and the compatibility of family life and a career must get off the drawing board and become reality, because we cannot do without the potential of women and the next generation of children. The Helmholtz Association has therefore launched a number of initiatives that help young parents reconcile their family responsibilities with demanding lab work.
Perhaps you can ask the young people around you about their aims for the future and the heroes whose footsteps they seek to follow. And perhaps you can show them that "You are Helmholtz! You sometimes think that your brain is about to crack. But you grit your teeth and you refuse to give up. Because you know that it all depends on you. You can help solve the great problems of our times. You can find new sources of energy, slow down climate change and conquer cancer!"
I sincerely believe that that is what young people are really looking for: great challenges that give them the opportunity to show what they can do, and where what they do really counts. And it is my belief that our future also depends on whether we succeed in enthusing the next generation for these challenges.
Thank you for listening.
