Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund can look back on an extraordinary career as a scientist and science administrator. In doing so, he has rendered outstanding services to Israeli-German academic relations in general and to relations with Freie Universität Berlin in particular.

Prof. Gutfreund is professor emeritus of physics and former president and rector of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In addition to physics and science administration, he has been intensively involved in the history of science in recent years and maintained close contacts with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in this context.

His commitment to the history of science and Israeli-German science relations have played a significant role for the department. Prof. Gutfreund campaigned for the transfer of historical documentation on the persecution of Jewish scientists under the Nazi regime to the archives of the Yad Vashem memorial. These history sources stem from many years of research by Gerhard Simonsohn, a former professor in the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin.