Holger Ziegeler formerly served as Consul General for Germany, undertaking diplomatic work in the United States, Ethiopia, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. In 2020, he presented the Max Planck Society’s Images of Science exhibition in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, an honor that was extended to him again in 2021 and 2022 when the Images of Science exhibition was staged at various locations in Pakistan, including Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta, and Karachi.
The Images of Science exhibition in Karachi was staged at the Mohatta Palace Museum in June 2022. Holger Ziegeler joined with Nasreen Askari, Curator of the Mohatta Palace Museum, greeting event guests in person. Mr Ziegeler invited students, academic groups, and the public at large to visit the Max Planck Society’s Images of Science exhibition to stimulate their interest in academic research.
As Mr Ziegeler highlighted, Germany is a nation with a proud history of wide-ranging research activities and a welcoming academic culture. Science has enabled humankind to push back the boundaries of the known world, exploring the new and making the unseen visible. In the process, imaging techniques play an ever-increasing role, with scientific images often conveying surprising visual structures and forms: abstract works of art that are largely hidden from the human eye in daily life.
Bringing together scientists from over 80 research institutes, the Max Planck Society created the Images of Science exhibition to provide fascinating glimpses into the world of science. Images showcased in the exhibition covered a variety of research fields and were captured using a variety of different techniques, ranging from conventional photography to computer simulation and colored microscopic images.
In an interview with Business Recorder, Holger Ziegeler explained that the exhibition came within the framework of 70 years of bilateral relations between Pakistan and Germany. He said that the exhibition had a scientific background, and a scientific background formed the basis for German industry, trade, and technology.
As Holger Ziegeler, himself a scientist, pointed out, Germany is a world technology leader in many aspects. To seek the truth and discover the secrets of nature requires scientific research. The Images of Science exhibition brought together the truth and beauty of the world, as Mr Ziegeler explained, quoting the poet John Keats, who famously said: “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.”
The Images of Science exhibition incorporated a variety of scientific images, including a piece produced by Dr Asifa Akhtar, a native of Karachi who serves as Vice President of the Max Planck Society and is the organization’s Director for Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg.
Images featured in the exhibition covered a variety of different areas of scientific research, from insights into the composition of the early universe to tiny neurons within the brain and various other areas of earth science and biology. Providing unprecedented images of the smallest details that form the base of knowledge and beauty in the world, the Max Planck Society’s Images of Science exhibition was a collaborative initiative that was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, supported by the Federation of German Industries, and implemented by the Goethe-Institute.
The exhibition featured larval models of Danio rerio, commonly known as the zebra fish, which is a popular model organism in developmental biology since it grows from a fertilized egg to a sexually mature adult in the space of just three months.
About the Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society is one of Germany’s leading non-university research organizations. Max Planck Institutes conduct innovative research into natural, biological, and social sciences and the humanities. The organization presents international researchers with many interesting opportunities in a variety of different research fields via its 86 research institutes and facilities.
Enjoying global recognition for its excellence in research, the Max Planck Society has produced a staggering 29 Nobel laureates in total who were members of the society – or the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, as it was once known – in the year in which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. For example, Emmanuelle Charpentier, who served as the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin’s Scientific and Managing Director, received the prestigious Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. In 2021, two researchers from the Max Planck Society received Nobel Prizes, namely Benjamin List, Director of the Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Klaus Hasselmann, Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The Max Planck Institutes present an open, vibrant working environment where more than half of all researchers hold a foreign passport, culminating in a creative cosmos where intercultural and interdisciplinary concepts and innovative ideas come to fruition. This in turn ensures the continuance of the exceptional research for which the society is renowned.
Today, almost 24,000 individuals are employed by the Max Planck Society, including doctoral students, researchers, graduates, visiting researchers, scholarship holders and staff. Headquartered in Munich, the Max Planck Society’s research institutions are located not just within Germany but overseas too, with each Max Planck Institute benefiting from its own budget, enjoying autonomy over its own research projects, and choosing its own staff, cooperation partners, and subject matter.
