90th birthday of
Professor Ludger Honnefelder

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Ludger Honnefelder, the founding director of the DRZE, turns 90 on 25 March. Our heartfelt congratulations!

After studying philosophy and Catholic theology, Ludger Honnefelder taught as a professor at the University of Trier and the Freie Universität Berlin.

From 1988 to 2001, he held a chair in philosophy at the University of Bonn. From 1993 to 2007 he served as Managing Director of the Institute for Science and Ethics (IWE) at the University of Bonn, which he co-founded, and from 1999 to 2007 as Managing Director of the newly established German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE) at the University of Bonn. From 2005 to 2007, he held the Guardini Foundation Professorship and from 2009 to 2012 the Otto Warburg Senior Research Professorship at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

He is a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. From 1998 to 2013, he served as a member of the Permanent Working Group on Science and Ethics of the All European Academies (ALLEA). From 1993 to 2012, he was a member of the German delegation to the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI), and from 2000 to 2002, he served as a member of the German Bundestag’s Study Commission on ‘Law and Ethics in Modern Medicine’.

His teaching and research focus on metaphysics, ethics and applied ethics, as well as the history of of medieval and early modern philosophy.

The University of Bonn, in collaboration with the DRZE and the Albertus-Magnus-Institut, will be honouring him with a small symposium entitled ‘Reason and Responsibility’, to which many guests are expected to attend.