Between Making Life Better or Making a Living
Prof. Dr. Victor Smetacek
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research
Date and time
Location
Lecture Hall, ThULB
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Sooner or later every researcher has to face the conflict between loving science and choosing to stay in a system with very unpredictable carrier chances. Considering this conflict, the following questions will be addressed in a talk + discussion round (in English) organized by the DR.FSU: What do I personally gain from a career in science? What can a scientist accomplish for the society and where are the limits? Do the structures of our scientific system hinder the formation and realization of great ideas? It is a pleasure for us that Professor Victor Smetacek from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research accepted our invitation to address the questions. With his iron fertilization experiments in 2000, 2004 and 2009, he gained a lot of public attention. In these experiments, he tested the hypothesis that adding iron to iron-depleted ocean areas would result in CO2 fixation in the deep sea, but he had to realize that great ideas also often result in heavy criticism. He frequently publishes his results and unconventional ideas in Nature and Science.