Robbert Dijkgraaf was appointed an honorary member of the Dutch Physical Society (NNV) and the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV) on 30 May. Dijkgraaf’s appointment is in recognition of his pioneering scientific work, his work as an ambassador for the sciences in general within the Netherlands, and his efforts to make the exact sciences appealing and accessible to a wide audience. The appointment took place at the University of Twente during the Fysica-Chemie conference 2012.
This was the first conference organized jointly by the Dutch Physical Society and the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. The first part of the programme was intended for physicists, chemists and students. Two lectures took place in the evening that were open to the public. The first lecture was given by Metin Tolan, Professor of Experimental Physics at the TU Dortmund University, who spoke on the 'physics of football’. He also audaciously predicted that Germany will win the match against the Netherlands on 13 June.
Afterwards the floor was given to Dan Shechtman, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2011. He spoke on his remarkable discovery of quasi-crystals. Shechtman conducted his pioneering research back in 1982. For the past 26 years, he has held a professorship at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa where he was voted ‘best lecturer ever’.
