Prof. Jörg Hacker’s Presidential Portrait Completed

It is a good tradition for an outgoing Leopoldina President to have his portrait taken for the Academy's President's Gallery. The XXVI President Professor Dr Jörg Hacker, who led the Leopoldina from 2010 to 2020, followed this request after leaving office. For the portrait, he chose Sebastian Herzau, who studied painting at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle, graduated in 2012 with a diploma in fine arts painting/graphics and has exhibited widely throughout Germany.

The Leopoldina Academy Circle of Friends reg. ass. was very happy to follow the Leopoldina's wish to finance this artistic work. The painting was completed in spring 2021. As the corona pandemic still prevents events with a larger number of people from taking place at the Leopoldina, the official unveiling has been postponed until probably spring 2022. We will inform all interested parties about the date in good time.

The festive handover of the presidential office to Hacker's successor, the XXVII President Prof. Dr Gerald Haug, took place on the 20^th of February 2020 in the presence of the Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, Dr Reiner Haseloff, and the Federal Minister of Education and Research, Anja Karliczek, with the participation of numerous other guests of honour. It was also the last attendance event, as the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina was forced to cancel all other planned attendance events for 2020 and the first half of 2021 due to the first Corona-related lockdown in spring 2020. The contributions to the festive handover of office can be read in NOVA ACTA LEOPOLDINA, Neue Folge, Supplementum number 39.