INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

60th Meeting of Nobel Laureates

Australian delegation to the 59th Meeting of
Nobel Laureates in Lindau, 28 June – 3 July 2009

The 2010 meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau is a multi-disciplinary meeting dedicated to chemistry, physics and medicine or physiology. With the support of the Academy, thirteen of Australia’s brightest early-career researchers will be attending the meeting to be held in Lindau Germany, from 27 June to 2 July. The group will be accompanied by Professor Kurt Lambeck FAA. Not only will this meeting provide the participants with the opportunity to meet and hear from Nobel laureates, it will also provide a fantastic opportunity for our early-career researchers to meet, discuss ideas and to potentially form beneficial relationships with peers from across the globe.

Initiated in 1950 as a European conference of leading scientists in medicine, the guiding principle of the first Lindau Congress of Nobel Laureates was to encourage international scientific dialogue with Nobel Laureates. The first congress of medical specialists has since evolved into open-minded encounters between Laureates, young researchers and students in other fields of the natural sciences: for over half a century now, Nobel Prize winners in medicine/physiology, chemistry and physics convene, alternating, for one week at the end of June each year at Lindau, Germany.

Usually about twenty Nobel Prize winners attend, to share insights into their life’s work and to interact with 600 outstanding young researchers and graduate students from around the world (up until now mainly from Western Europe, but increasingly in recent years from the USA, Central America, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Russia, Eastern Europe Africa and Australia).

In line with the initiators’ concept of building bridges between nations and cultures, the Lindau forum offers the upcoming generation of scientists an opportunity to instigate and foster what can be called a 'Dialogue among Cultures', both on scientific issues and on a more peaceful future. The bridges they build have a lasting impact beyond the Meetings. In the course of their personal encounters, participants jointly develop new ideas, and create networks of cooperation and international friendship, to the benefit of scientific progress.

For more information on the Meetings of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, please visit the Lindau-Nobel website.