Danksagung
von Professor Dr. Niels Peder Kristensen
Herr Präsident!
Permit me for a while to make use of my first foreign language.
In your laudatio you have focussed on my personal achievments.
When ex-tending to the Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft – and
to its president personally – my sincere thanks for the award
of this prestigious distinction, I want at the same time to express
my gratitude to all of those who have contributed to the research
environments in which these achievments were made: few scients’
careers evolved in a vacuum, mine certainly did not.
It has been my privilege to grow up in an academic environment
that was markedly influenced by earlier generations of outstanding
arthropod systematicists and morphologists: J. C. SCHØDTE,
W. SØRENSEN and H. J. HANSEN in particular. Strong personalities
whose assertively worded views have not always stood the test
of time, but whose legacy of commitment to the research fields
in question was passed on to their successors: initially to K.
L. HENRIKSEN, and from him to my generation’s supervisors,
S. L. TUXEN and, in particular, A. NIELSEN. It has similarly been
my privilege to spend parts of my formative years in stimulating
research environments abroad: with the colourful entomology polyhistor
H. E. HINTON in Bristol, and later with J. CHAUDONNERET at the
founding site of the unsurpassed ‘Dijon school’ of insect
morphology.
I have been privileged also in having worked, throughout the many
years of my tenured employment, in a research department characterized
by a stimulating and overall cheerful atmosphere. The importance
of untroubled relations between scientist colleagues – and
between institutional management and staff – is some-thing
which really comes home to you when visiting institutions where
conditions are different; then you start counting your own blessings!
The present international status of the Copenhagen Museum’s
Entomology Department probably largely derives from long-term
synergistic endeavours of N. M. ANDERSEN, H. ENGHOFF and myself,
now fortunately supplemented by high-profile younger colleagues
hired during the present decade. The role of our research students
and post-docs must also be emphasized. Among my former students
E. S. NIELSEN, now director of the ‘Australian National Insect
Collection’ should be singled out for our long-lasting subsequent
research collaboration. In a general way there is perhaps no greater
pleasure and stimulus to an academic than seeing bright students
taking an interest in topics close to one’s heart, and then
developing skills that go beyond one’s own.
Finally I will underscore the privilege I have had in belonging
to a generation of Scandinavian scientists from whom a working
knowledge of the three major European languages was expected.
While I am of the strong opinion, that the use of just a single
language, English, should be encouraged for all present and future
international interactions between scholars, I am no less adamant
about the vital importance of continued accessibility to the legacy
left us in the German and French literature on several subjects,
including exactly arthropod morphology and evolution.
Für meine eigene Forschung hat die deutschsprachige Literatur
eine entscheidende Rolle gespielt. Wenn ich zum Beispiel nicht
die vielen morphologischen Arbeiten aus der „WEBER-Schule"
hätte lesen können, und wenn mir wichtige Arbeiten HENNIGs
nicht oder nur in den viel späteren Übersetzungen zugänglich
wären, dann wäre ich als Wissenschaftler sicherlich
weniger erfolgreich gewesen. Eben deshalb hat mich die Verleihung
der JUNGIUS-Medaille ausserordentlich erfreut.
Nochmals herzlichen Dank!