Professor Dieter Meschede, University of Bonn, Germany, has been elected President of the German Physical Society (DPG; Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft) from 2018 to 2020. He succeeds Rolf-Dieter Heuer. With around 62,000 members, the DPG is the largest physical society in the world.

Dieter Meschede, born 1954 in Lathen, Germany, studied physics at the University of Cologne, Germany. In 1984, he gained his Ph.D. in physics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. From 1984 to 1986, he was Lecturer at Yale University,  New Haven, CT, USA, and from 1986 to 1987, Assistant Professor there, from 1988 to 1990, he was Senior Scientist at the MPI für Quantenoptik Garching, Germany, and from 1990 to 1994, Full Professor of Physics at the University of Hanover; Germany. Since 1994, Meschede is Full Professor of Physics at the University of Bonn, Germany.

His research interests include the field of atomic, molecular and quantum physics. The so-called “conveyor belt of light” (it moves and sorts individual atoms with the help of laser beams and radio-frequency precision) is one of the research results of his group. Using this “conveyor belt” atoms could be used as an arithmetic unit for a quantum computer.

Among other honors, was awarded the Rudolf Kaiser Prize in 1989 (inaugural recipient) and the Robert Wichard Pohl Prize in 2007. Meschede is the editor of the well-known German physics textbook Gerthsen Physik. And Meschede won a gold medal at the 1976 World Rowing Championships in Villach, Germany, with the lightweight men’s eight.

• Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG; German Physical Society), Bad Honnef, Germany