Celebration of the 80th birthday of Harald Rose

February 16th 2015 - Just 2 days after Harald Rose's birthday, on February 16th 2015, his 80th birthday was celebrated in a joint ceremony of the Universities of Ulm and Darmstadt at the University of Ulm. The very special physical colloquium was taking place at Ulm University and was hosted and organized by Ute Kaiser and co-organized by Paul Walther and Christoph Koch. More than 130 colleagues and friends of Harald Rose came from 16 countries of the world. The event experienced lively discussions full of respect of the great achievements of Harald Rose, who has devoted all his live to charged particle optics and electron microscopy. The guests expressed also their thanks for so many discussions with Harald Rose in the field of electron microscopy, electron optics and charged particle physics in general.

The first talk was given by Hannes Lichte (University of Dresden). He talked about the life, the academic career and the important achievements of Harald Rose. At the beginning, Hannes Lichte presented a picture-show of "80 years Professor Rose" and discussed the understanding and scientific impact of the discoveries of Harald Rose. The talk by Hannes Lichte was followed by Dirk Preikszas and Joachim Zach. Their presentation were entitled "The history of the electron mirror" and "Harald Rose, a life dedicated to research and teaching". Preikszas showed the latest results from the ZEISS company, where the electron mirror was finally realized in the latest scanning electron microscope and Zach explained the way how the research group of Harald Rose at Darmstadt University was guided to their great achievements.

After this the presentations two announcements were made, firstly Manfred Efinger, Chancellor of Technical University of Darmstadt, announced the donation of a 3000 Euro prize for students to the honor of Harald Rose. The Prize will be donated by CEOS company for the next 10 years. The "Harald Rose Prize" will be awarded to students of Darmstadt and Ulm who achieved outstanding results in the field of imaging during their master or doctor thesis. Another announcement was made by Angus Kirkland from the University of Oxford and Ute Kaiser from University of Ulm. They prepared two volumes of Harald Roses papers in the journals "Optik" and "Ultramicroscopy" and in honor of Harald 80th birthday they also wanted to make them available via the publisher Oxford Press. To make sure that these papers are easily accessible to all scientists, the original papers by Harald Rose will be published in due course on the internet page of the Kaiser group.

Another highlight of the ceremony was the chamber choir of the University of Ulm with the director Manuel Haupt. They were beautifully singing pieces from Dowland, Mendelssohn and Mozart. This was completed with the piano music by Valerij Petasch, he fascinated the audience with own compositions and pieces from Chopin and Mendelssohn. After-dinner talk of Helmut Kohl, University of Munster, showed a very special insight into the life of Harald Rose as a teacher at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In final, Ute Kaiser presented a particular gift of her group the "expert aberration corrector hat" following the academic tradition of doctorial hats.

The local organizers are very grateful to the donations and sponsorships of CEOS, DGE, FEI, Gatan, Hitachi, Jeol, Nion, Tescan, Technical University of Darmstadt and ZEISS.