At the anniversary party held to celebrate Aarhus University’s 80th birthday on Friday 12 September, Rector Lauritz B. Holm-Nielsen made six international researchers into honorary doctors of the university, their title being “doctor honoris causa”.

Honorary doctor Heinrich Detering

Dr. Heinrich Detering, a professor at Seminar für Deutsche Philologie, Georg-August Universität Göttingen, was made an honorary doctor of the Faculty of the Humanities.

Heinrich Detering is a literary researcher who is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading Germanists. Apart from his considerable academic production, which also includes major Danish authors, he has helped to develop cultural and academic links between Denmark and Germany. His academic range is enormous. Most recently, he has published the first ever German monograph on the words and music of Bob Dylan.

When Professor Detering’s PhD dissertation was published in 1990, entitled “Theodizee und Erzählverfahren. Narrative Experimente mit religiösen Modellen im Werk Wilhelm Raabes”, it was recognised as an academic achievement of excellence by the Raabe Institute and Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. In 1993 Professor Detering gained a doctorate in German philology.

Heinrich Detering has close ties with Aarhus University. He is a Danish-speaking specialist in German and Scandinavian literature, an official opponent for Danish PhD and doctoral dissertations, a visiting professor at Aarhus University, and an overseas member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Professor Detering is a researcher and academic who has contributed in exemplary fashion to the cultural and academic links existing between Denmark and Germany.

Honorary doctor Sir Alan Roy Fersht

Sir Alan Roy Fersht is the Director of the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering, and a professor in organic chemistry at Cambridge University. He was made an honorary doctor of the Faculty of Science.

Professor Fersht is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of protein engineering, which involves the systematic replacement of parts of a protein with a view to understanding the way that proteins work. His work is characterised by clear vision, consistency, and outstandingly cogent analysis of test results.

He gained a PhD in organic chemistry at Cambridge University in 1968. He was Wolfson Research Professor of the Royal Society and a professor of biological chemistry at Imperial College, London from 1978 to 1989, after which he returned to Cambridge University.

Professor Fersht and Professor Brian Clark from Aarhus University have jointly organised a number of the popular Spetsai Summer Schools in Protein Science. He has also been part of an international network of Protein Engineering Research Centres which Brian Clark and Hans Chr. Thøgersen from Aarhus University have helped to organise. And finally, he has had Professor Daniel Otzen from Aarhus University working as a PhD scholar in his laboratory.

Sir Alan Roy Fersht has received a wide range of honorary awards for his work, and has been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize on several occasions. In 2003 he was knighted in recognition of his work in the field of protein folding.

Honorary doctor Bernhard Lang

Professor Bernhard Lang, Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Paderborn, was made an honorary doctor of the Faculty of Theology.

Bernhard Lang gained a doctorate in theology at Tübingen University in 1975, and in 1977 he gained a “habilitation” degree at Freiburg im Breisgau University. He has been a professor at the universities of Tübingen, Mainz and Paderborn, and a visiting professor at the universities of Philadelphia, Paris and St. Andrews.

Professor Lang’s research is wide ranging and innovative, and he has had a major influence on the modern development of the way the Old Testament is studied. He has combined traditional, philologically based, historical-critical research with modern anthropology and the study of religion. Lang’s theory of the Jahwe Alone Movement in the middle of the 1st millennium BC has played a central role in understanding decisive changes in the religious history of Ancient Israel, and his main conclusions have now been generally accepted.

In partnership with Manfred Görg, Bernhard Lang has been the editor of the modern German standard reference work entitled Neues Bibel-Lexicon, and he is the editor of the annual journal called International Review of Biblical Studies (Brill).

Bernhard Lang has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of Theology at Aarhus University on two occasions.

Honorary doctor Jean Lave

Professor Emerita Jean Lave, University of California, Berkeley, was made an honorary doctor of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Denmark’s School of Education, Aarhus University.

Professor Lave gained a PhD in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1968. In 1989 she became a professor at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.

Jean Lave is highly respected internationally for her research in the fields of anthropology and pedagogics, and has a broad range of research publications to her name. She has made very important contributions to a theoretical understanding of cognition in everyday life and learning in practical situations. Her research has had a particularly significant impact on inter-disciplinary areas involving pedagogics, psychology and organisation research.

Jean Lave has also been important for Danish psychology and pedagogics research. Among other things, she has helped to ensure that education research now focuses to a larger extent on practical situations.

The first time she taught in Denmark was in 1989 on a researcher course at the Centre for Qualitative Method Development at the Department of Psychology, Aarhus University. Since then she has taken part in a number of events at the department. In addition, Jean Lave has hosted a number of Danish students, PhD scholars and researchers at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.

In connection with the award of her honorary doctorate, Jean Lave will be giving a lecture entitled ”Changing Perspectives on the Craft of Apprenticeship” in the Lakeside Lecture Theatres on Friday 19 September at 2.15 pm.

Honorary doctor Kurt Mehlhorn

Kurt Mehlhorn is a professor at Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Universität des Saarlandes. He was made an honorary doctor of the Faculty of Science.

Professor Mehlhorn is one of the leading computer scientists in Europe. His primary research area relates to the development of effective algorithms, an area in which he focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects.

He gained his PhD at Cornell University in 1974. Since 1975 he has been a professor at the Department of Computer Science at Universität des Saarlandes, and since 1990 he has been the leader of Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, of which he is also the founder.

Kurt Mehlhorn has had close links with Aarhus University for many years, and has indirectly played a major role in the development of algorithm research at the Department of Computer Science in Aarhus. As long ago as the late 1980s Mehlhorn was one of the people who took the initiative to include Aarhus University in the successful EU project known as ALCOM.

In the 1990s he helped to set up a formal PhD partnership between the BRICS basic research centre and Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik. Most recently Mehlhorn has been one of the six core researchers involved in the new basic research centre called MADALGO (Center for Massive Data Algorithmics), which is based at Aarhus University but also includes Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Johann-Wolfgang Goethe Universität, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Honorary doctor Salvador Moncada

Professor Salvador Moncada, Director of the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, was made an honorary doctor of medicine.

Salvador Moncada gained his PhD under the supervision of Sir John Vane at the Royal College of Surgeons, where he took part in the discovery of the effect mechanisms in aspirin-like drugs. He then started working at the Wellcome Research Laboratories, Kent, where he helped to discover the enzyme known as tromboxan synthase and subsequently led the team that discovered prostacyclin.

Professor Moncada’s research interests comprise thrombosis, arteriosclerosis and inflammation. In particular, he has helped to discover the way in which NO (nitrogen monoxide) is formed and the pharmacological effect of prostaglandins, which are produced during the biological conversion of the unsaturated fatty acid called arachidonic acid. In recent years his research has focused on the biological effect of the interchange between NO and mitochondria.

Salvador Moncada has contributed to more than 700 publications, and his discoveries have attracted great attention in the scientific world. According to the Institute for Scientific Information, he was the second most highly cited researcher in the world during the years 1990-1997.

He collaborates with the Institute of Pharmacology at Aarhus University, and is a visiting professor at the nationwide school of researchers known as the Danish Cardiovascular Research Academy (DaCRA). He also gave a lecture at the PhD day organised by the Faculty of Health Science in January 2008.

Professor Moncada is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. He has also received a great number of awards – including the Amsterdam Prize for Medicine and the Spanish Prince of Asturia’s Prize for Science and Technology.

Press photo of Heinrich Detering
Press photo of Allan Fersht
Press photo of Bernhard Lang
Press photo of Jean Lave
Press photo of Kurt Mehlhorn
Press photo of Salvador Moncada