At the annual celebration on Friday 11 September, Vice-Chancellor Lauritz B. Holm-Nielsen named eight international researchers as honorary doctors – doctor honoris causa .

Honorary Doctor Theodor Baums

Professor Theodor Baums, Director of the Institute for Law and Finance, Frankfurt University, Germany, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Aarhus School of Business.

Professor Baums has had a long and distinguished legal career, which includes professorships at several German universities, as well as international visiting professorships at universities such as Stanford and Columbia, USA. He has also influenced German and European legal development in fields such as corporate governance, German and European corporate law and the law of corporate finance, as well as being an adviser to institutions such as Deutsche Bank and the World Bank.

To sum up, Professor Baums is absolutely one of today’s most distinguished German professors in the area of corporate law.

For a number of years, Professor Baums has had good relations with the Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, including the corporate law research environment in particular. In collaboration with Professor Paul Krüger Andersen, he took the initiative to set up the European Model Company Law Group, which includes more than twenty prominent European professors in the area of company law. The group is working on the development of a European Model Company Law Act. Professor Andersen chairs the group, while Professor Baums is vice-chair.

In addition, educational collaboration has been set up between the Institute for Law and Finance, Frankfurt University, and the Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, regarding a double degree in Law and Finance.

Professor Baums has also been awarded the Order of Merit 1st class of the Federal Republic of Germany, and he has honorary doctorates from the European Business School ( Dr.rer.Pol.Hc ) and the University of Luxembourg ( Professeur Associé ). 

Honorary Doctor Irving A.Mendelssohn

Professor Irving A.Mendelssohn, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Science.
Professor Mendelssohn has received more than USD 9.5 million in grants for his research at Louisiana State University, and he has published more than 125 articles, including two in the renowned scientific journal Science .

For the last two decades, he has been affiliated with the Faculty of Science via collaboration with researchers at the Department of Biological Sciences – particularly the research units in botany and plant ecology.

Professor Mendelssohn’s association with Aarhus University began as a collaboration with Associate Professor Arne Jensen, who subsequently retired, but the collaboration continued with other researchers at the department (Hans-Henrik Schierup, Hans Brix and Bent Lorenzen). In 1994, Professor Mendelssohn was appointed Visiting Professor at Aarhus University for a period of six months.

The plant ecology research unit has subsequently maintained virtually continuous research collaboration with the American scientist. This collaboration has resulted in a number of joint research publications, and Professor Mendelssohn has given visiting lectures and taken part in teaching activities at Aarhus University on several occasions.

Honorary Doctor Peer Lorenzen

Judge at the European Court of Human Rights Peer Lorenzen was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Judge Lorenzen graduated from Aarhus University with a Master of Laws and has had an outstanding legal career. He has worked in the Danish Ministry of Justice, as Head of Department for the Danish Parliamentary Ombudsman, as Judge and subsequently President of the High Court of Western Denmark, as Judge of the Supreme Court of Denmark and, since 1998, as Danish Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. In addition, he has been Chair of Denmark’s Refugee Appeals Board, and has chaired and participated in different commissions and committees, both in Denmark and abroad.

As regards Aarhus University, Judge Lorenzen chaired the body of external examiners for law degree programmes in Aarhus for a period, just as he participated in several assessment committees in connection with PhD dissertations and appointments to positions within a wide area of matters pertaining to both civil law and public law.

In addition to his extensive work in practical law, Judge Lorenzen has made considerable contributions to legal research – mainly within the area of human rights.

Honorary Doctor Neil Shephard

Professor Neil Shephard, Nuffield College/Oxford-Man Institute, University of Oxford, UK, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science.

Professor Shephard has been awarded several academic distinctions and prizes. In 2006, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy, just as he is Fellow of the Econometric Society. In addition, he is co-editor of Econometrica – absolutely the most renowned journal in the field of economics – where he has also published a number of research articles.

Professor Shephard is indisputably one of the leading and most acknowledged researchers in the world in the fields of time series econometrics and financial econometrics. His interdisciplinary research covers fields such as mathematics, statistics, econometrics, economy and financing.

For the last ten years, the British professor has had excellent collaboration with Professor Ole Barndorff-Nielsen, Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Centre for Research in Econometric Analysis of Time Series (CREATES), Aarhus University. Together, they have made remarkable and significant contributions to the analysis, modelling and understanding of the variability and “jumps” in financial markets.

Professor Shephard has an exceptional list of publications in all the leading international journals in statistics, stochastics and econometrics. His work over the last ten years is mainly the result of his collaboration with the Danish professor.

Honorary Doctor Mark A. Knepper

Doctor Mark A. Knepper, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator, Laboratory of Kidney and Electrolyte Metabolism (LKEM), National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Doctor Knepper is a leading international researcher in experimental renal research with a focus on cellular physiological, physiological, pathophysiological and system biological methods for analysing the kidney’s regulation of the body’s water and salt balance and blood pressure. The American professor’s scientific production is extensive and extremely well cited.

Since 1991, Doctor Knepper has been a very close working partner with a number of researchers at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Aarhus University, which has led to 119 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, the recruitment of key workers and the setting up of research periods for scientists at Aarhus University.

Honorary Doctor Thomas Willnow

Professor Thomas Willnow from the medical faculties at the universities of Berlin, Germany, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Doctor Willnow’s field of research is mainly physiology and cell biology. In his research, Doctor Willnow has made a major contribution to the understanding of the physiological relevance of receptor-mediated endocytosis. His research has provided answers to long-standing questions about human physiology, and has meant a changed perception of key concepts in medical biology.

For many years, Doctor Willnow has collaborated with colleagues at several departments at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital. In particular, he has worked closely for many years with Professor Anders Nykjær from the Department of Medical Biochemistry, and they have achieved many scientific breakthroughs together, which have been published in the most renowned journals such as Nature , Cell , Nature Neuroscience , Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Neuroscience . This has provided Aarhus University with its international acknowledgement within this field.

Honorary Doctor Georges Kleiber

Professor Georges Kleiber, University of Strasbourg, France, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Humanities.

Ever since the publication of his ground-breaking book about reference in 1981, Professor Kleiber’s work has been crucially important for the development of semantics as a linguistic discipline, and he must currently be regarded as one of the greatest linguists France has produced.

Professor Kleiber has published 14 monographs and edited 28 anthologies. In addition, he has written close to 300 articles, the majority of which have been published in journals with peer review.

Professor Kleiber has been awarded a number of prizes and distinctions – including Officier des Palmes Académiques , Le Prix Joseph Housiaux and a silver medal from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Professor Kleiber has visited Aarhus University on several occasions, and most recently participated in the 2001 international colloquium on macrosyntax and macrosemantics, which assembled virtually the whole elite within this area.

Honorary Doctor Dietrich Benner

Doctor Dietrich Benner, Professor of General Educational Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Danish School of Education.

Doctor Benner is regarded by many as being the most outstanding and inspiring contemporary researcher in Europe in the fields of general education and educational philosophy. He studied philosophy and specialised in general education. His books Allgemeine Pädagogik from 1987 and Hauptströmungen der Erziehungswissenschaft from 1991 have achieved the status of classics in educational philosophy.

Doctor Benner’s pedagogical way of thinking has not only had an impact on German educational research, but has also been important outside Germany’s borders in the remaining European countries and in other parts of the world, such as China and Japan.

Doctor Benner has twice given lectures in Denmark, once in 2003 at the Danish School of Education, and again in 2005 in connection with the publication in Danish of Tekster til dannelsesfilosofi – mellem etik, pædagogik og politik . On the latter occasion, his lectures were held at the Danish School of Education, the University of Southern Denmark and University College South. He has also aroused interest among Danish religious educators, as the journal Religionspædagogisk Forum featured one of his articles in its first edition: En tidssvarende religionsundervisning i den offentlige skole .

Press photo of Theodor Baums
Press photo of Irving A. Mendelssohn
Press photo of Peer Lorenzen
Press photo of Mark A. Knepper
Press photo of Thomas Willnow
Press photo of Dietrich Benner

11 September 2009

Rasmus Stensgaard
Communicattion Office
rst@adm.au.dk