Dear reader,

As Nobel laureate and Humboldtian Emmanuelle Charpentier summed it up at our Annual Meeting two weeks ago, “new discoveries come from a mixture of ideas, of people, of cultures, of methodologies”. More than 1,000 Humboldtians from all over the world were on hand for this year’s get-together – held online for the second time now because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The conference motto “Diversity of Ideas” resonated strongly with the attendees, due perhaps in part to the long months of maintaining physical distance we’ve been through. Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier even spoke of diversity as “the best way to create a just society – and the best way to achieve academic and scientific success”. The conditions that the pandemic imposes upon us have also made us very aware again of how important sharing information and ideas and coming together across all borders is.

In this issue of our Newsletter, you can read more about our digital Annual Meeting, the recently selected Humboldt Professors for 2022, and our new initiatives for collaboration with African researchers.

We wish you an enjoyable time reading these and other reports!