Siegfried Bethke, who received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany last year for his outstanding commitment to the field of fundamental research in physics, had been a member of the Institute since 1999 - from 2000 to 2006 as Managing Director.
He was involved in the ATLAS experiment and thus in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Siegfried Bethke not only played a major role in shaping the research activities at the institute: As a scientific delegate, he represented Germany on the CERN Council for many years. From 2012 to 2020, he served as a member of the European Strategy Group in this committee.
The event will begin with a brief welcome by Managing Director Dieter Lüst and Marumi Kado, the new Director of Experimental High Energy Physics at MPP.
Keynote speakers are Gavin Salam (University of Oxford) and Rolf-Dieter Heuer (former Director General of CERN). Both are closely connected to Siegfried Bethke through their work at CERN. Rolf Heuer will therefore shed some light on Bethke's career for the guests in his speech "Strong". Before that, Gavin Salam will highlight Bethke's crucial contributions to this field of research in his talk "QCD across colliders and energy".
The event will conclude at 6:00 pm with a discussion and Q&A session.