2024-02-28 14:20:43
Quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger has been a Nobel Prize winner since 2022 – and now also an honorary citizen of his hometown Vienna. On Wednesday he received the corresponding certificate from Mayor Michael Ludwig (SPÖ) in the town hall. The city boss praised the scientist, among other things, for his commitment to communicating his findings to laypeople. Zeilinger was touched: “Honorary citizenship is something very special.”
Ludwig pointed out, for example, that Zeilinger had also given lectures at the Vienna Adult Education Center. He was only the second Nobel Prize winner to do this – following Albert Einstein in 1921, whom Zeilinger contradicted in one of his VHS lectures (“Where Einstein wasn’t right”). Ludwig also recalled experiments, such as the one in which Zeilinger beamed parts of light from the Prater to the Danube Island. “It doesn’t get much more typical in Vienna,” said the mayor.
The laudation was given by the physicist Walter Kutschera. He took a trip into the history of science and admitted that the statements of quantum mechanics were “generally not easy to understand.” However, Kutschera stated that Zeilinger might also achieve achievements in completely different areas. For example, he provided “counterproof” that you don’t have to die in the city first for the Viennese to celebrate you – as Helmut Qualtinger once put it.
Zeilinger thanked him for the recognition. The physicist, who was born in Ried im Innkreis (Upper Austria), said he felt very honored and came to Vienna in 1955 at the age of ten. It was the first of four arrivals in the city, he explained. He later returned to Vienna following long stays in the USA and Innsbruck. Zeilinger assumed that honorary citizenship would now be the fourth – and probably final – arrival.
In the past twenty years, 15 personalities from politics, science and culture have received honorary citizenship, including Hugo Portisch, Franz Vranitzky, Heinz Fischer, Eric Pleskow, Friederike Mayröcker, Elfriede Jelinek and most recently Erika Freeman. Associated with the award is an “entry” in a marble plaque in Vienna City Hall and in the book of honorary citizens.
Three honorary citizens were also personally present in the city senate meeting room today, namely former Federal President Fischer, ex-mayor Michael Häupl and his long-time city councilor for finance Sepp Rieder (both SPÖ). Education Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP), the President of the Academy of Sciences, Heinz Faßmann, and the Rector of the University of Vienna, Sebastian Schütze, were also among the numerous guests of honor.
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