Foreword

The year 2009 was an exciting and – in some ways – even an especially positive year for PTB. Thus, for example, the European Parliament agreed to fund the coordinated European metrological research in accordance with Article 169 of the Treaty on European Union, for the next seven years, with cofinancing of 200 million euros, starting in 2010. On May 18th, we presented the programme to the public in a press conference in the presence of representatives of the European Parliament, the Commission, the BMBF and the BMWi. A detailed description of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) and the structures involved with its implementation can be found in the PTBMitteilungen 4.2009 under the topic "Europäische Metrologie" ("European Metrology"). Characteristic of the EMRP is that it increasingly also addresses present-day "megathemes" (energy, climate and environment, health).

In 2009, free again of the burden of external evaluations, naturally the main focus was unreservedly on technical work. This is addressed by the present annual report and the more detailed description on PTB’s Internet pages. Here I would particularly like to refer you to the block "News of the Year", where some of the most spectacular events are briefly presented, as, for instance, the development of a quantum standard for farad, the unit of capacitance, on the basis of the quantum Hall effect, the first-time realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate with the alkaline earth atom calcium, or the direct observation (live imaging) of the formation and repair of radiation-induced DNA damage in cell cultures with our micro-ion beam.

The increasing external recognition of our research results and services is also gratifying. Thus, in 2009, distinguished, among others, were:

• Uwe Klausmeyer, with the Lord Kelvin Award of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
• Volker Wittstock, with the Lothar Cremer Prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik (DEGA) (German Acoustical Society)
• Lorenz Mitschang and Wolfgang Kilian, together with Christian Freud (FUB) in the Medical Technology Innovation Competition of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and
• Detlef Schiel, Olaf Rienitz and Bernd Güttler, together with colleagues from the University of Stuttgart and the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wasserforschung (Mülheim), with the CITAC Award 2009.

Special mention should also be made of the visit of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the then Federal Minister of Economics and Technology, and his commendatory words about our work.

At the end of 2009, it was time to take leave of a very important PTB authority, the Deutscher Kalibrierdienst (DKD) (German Calibration Service). After a more than 30-year success story, the DKD is formally leaving PTB and will be integrated into the newly founded, sole Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle (DAkkS) (German Accreditation Body). DKD, as part of DAkkS, will, however, remain at its location at PTB Braunschweig and remain professionally affiliated with PTB in order to maintain and expand in this way its high degree of competence.

The QUEST Institute at PTB, established together with the Leibniz University of Hannover as part of the QUEST Excellence Cluster, has not yet completed its start-up phase, but it has nonetheless already achieved novel scientific results.

Also in other areas, PTB has again reinforced its commitment to promote the advancement of young scientists. Currently, about 100 doctoral candidates and about 30 post-docs are working on scientific projects at PTB. It is expected that these numbers will still increase exceedingly in the next few years due to the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP). These young scientists come not only from Germany but also from all parts of the world and thus, together with our guest scientists, contribute to the traditionally international atmosphere in our laboratories.

Also for the encouragement of very young talent in science, research and development, we have been exceptionally active this year: With the project “Knowledge Searchers at PTB” we offer primary school pupils from the region instruction in physics experiments - all about the kilogram, meter and second. At this point, I would like to thank all of those who worked on an honorary basis on this project which met with an enormous demand at the primary schools.

Naturally, my thanks are moreover directed towards all employees of PTB for their dedicated service.