No. 115/2023

Mr Schlögl, you are assuming office in the Humboldt Foundation’s 70th anniversary year, which falls in troubled times. Politicians are having to cope with a remit that ranges from restructuring power supplies to a new security regime. Science diplomacy and, by association, the Humboldt Foundation are faced with the threat of budgetary cuts in the coming years. What challenges are awaiting you as President of the Foundation? Currently, the most important one is indeed to secure reliable financing. At the moment, the value of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is not sufficiently recognised in the political arena. Of course, they all know the name. But if you ask what the Foundation actually does, you are met with silence. And the thinking goes like this: if something has a budget of 150 million euros, it doesn’t matter if you take away the odd five million. How do you want to persuade the politicians otherwise? I have been advising politicians on the energy transition for a long time and I know my way around the business a bit. One should never suggest that parliamentarians don’t value science. But when it comes to setting priorities, they plump for things they feel confident about. After all, they have to be able to defend their decisions. I want to do more to ensure that the politicians who are responsible for the Foundation feel confident that they are espousing a good cause. That’s easy when you are dealing with applied research, like green energy. The value of the Foundation’s worldwide network seems pretty abstract by comparison. How would you explain its usefulness to politicians? Science only functions when it is a global undertaking. Gaining knowledge by falsifi­ cation only works if you look at one and the same thing from different perspectives. If those perspectives are subject to discipline- specific or national restrictions, the bigger picture quickly gets lost. Climate change, for instance, touches on so many different aspects that it would be completely hopeless to try and fight it without adopting a holistic approach. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s network is exceptionally well positioned PROFESSOR DR ROBERT SCHLÖGL became the president of the Humboldt Foundation in January 2023. Until the end of March 2023, he was the director of the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, having previously taught and conducted research on inorganic chemistry as a professor at Goethe University Frankfurt. Until 2022, he was the founding and managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr. He is the vice president of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and a member of various other acade­ mies, such as a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in London. “EXCELLENT SCIENCE SHOULD NOT BE A QUESTION OF GEOGRAPHY” Encouraging cooperation with Africa, defining clear rules for dealing with difficult partners like China and utilising the Humboldt Network to combat climate change: a conversation with the chemist and green energy expert Robert Schlögl about his goals on becoming the new president of the Humboldt Foundation and how you can complete your school leaving examinations and do a bricklaying apprenticeship at the same time. FOCUS 18 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 115/2023