German Lang. Media: Improving solar technology (reporting)
Top-physicist and top-athlete: Martha Lux-Steiner winning the (physicists-only) Atomiade
Of course: Lots of ink about Kopenhagn in the German speaking press. Too much to sum it up here, but I would like to mention one article, which stands for dozens of others: The German version of the Financial Times (Financial Times Deutschland, which closed the daily science section a few months ago) published a profile of the Berlin physicist Martha Lux-Steiner – within a series called „Green Minds“. It’s a long and insightful article (from Joachim Müller-Soares) about the first female physics professor at the Free University of Berlin ever. But instead of reading about details of her childhood I would have liked to learn more about her research at the Institute for Heterogenous Material Systems at the Helmholtz-Center in Berlin – which is, I would assume, the main reason she is such a well known and honored „international expert“. Only one paragraph briefly mentions, that she is working on a substitution material for solar cells – thinner, cheaper, less energy demanding during production than silicate. Does this material has the capacity of a breakthrough in solar technology? Will this solve the energy problems of the future? This would have made the piece a lot more timely – with thousands of people in Kopenhagn discussing about how to deal with the negative outcomes of old and dirty technologies for the generation of energy, because we can’t just switch to the green solar technologies before scientists like Lux-Steiner came up with major improvements.
- Sascha Karberg
