The University of Bonn was recently gifted an extraordinary book, the donation of which had been promised 70 years ago by the since deceased Dutch ambassador and sinologist Robert van Gulik. The work is a volume titled “Erotic colour prints of the Ming Period: with an essay on Chinese sex life from the Han to the Ch'ing dynasty, B.C. 206 - A.D. 1644”. The work was printed in Tokyo in 1951 in a limited edition of only 50 copies. The ambassador’s son, Prof. Thomas van Gulik, presented the book to Prof. Dr. Ralph Kauz of the University of Bonn Department of Oriental and Asian Studies in a special ceremony.
The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope was launched into space today at 17:11 CEST on a Falcon 9 rocket from the U.S. space company SpaceX. From its destination, the Lagrange Point 2 (L2) of the Earth and Sun, it will observe over a third of the entire sky for at least six years and map the spatial distribution of several billion galaxies. The data obtained will provide information about the influence of dark matter and dark energy on the structure of the Universe. With six research institutes, Germany is strongly involved in the international Euclid Consortium. Among them is the Argelander Institute for Astronomy (AIfA) at the University of Bonn.
The latest rankings issued by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have again shown that the University of Bonn is a leading scientific-academic institution and a significant player in international research.
Fossil skeletons have long fascinated researchers as a window to prehistory. But so far, little is known about details of sexual development in extinct creatures. An international team of researchers from China, Germany and Japan, with significant participation from the University of Bonn, reports on the puberty of Keichousaurus in the journal Current Biology. This is a small marine viviparous reptile that lived about 240 million years ago in what is now China.
Assistant Professor Dr. Vera Traub from the Institute for Discrete Mathematics at the University of Bonn is joining nine other researchers in being awarded the €200,000 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has accepted mathematician Dr. Illia Karabash from the University of Bonn onto its Heisenberg Programme. This provides five years’ worth of funding that enables researchers to complete high-quality projects and thus further increase their academic and scientific reputation. Karabash’s research is geared toward the mathematical optimization of optical resonators, a key component in quantum computing.
Nearly 300 guests attended the opening event of the “An Invitation from the University of Excellence Bonn” series on June 14, 2023 and were treated to an informative and wide-reaching evening. Alongside talks about Argelander’s research and its enduring importance, the impact of his work was also explored through artistic means. By the time the event concluded, one thing was clear: there’s plenty of call for another such event.
Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) are awarded to outstanding researchers and are worth millions of euros in funding. Assistant Professor Yongguo Li from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Bonn has now obtained a much-sought-after ERC Starting Grant. The researcher is investigating how the lipid metabolism can be influenced so as to “burn” as many calories as possible, thus opening up potential new ways to treat obesity and diabetes.