News from the Göttingen Campus

Göttingen researchers investigate the effect of income inequality on behaviour
Do differences in performance have an impact on the appetite for risk-taking in decision-makers? Economists at the University of Göttingen have addressed this question. The result of their study is that people's willingness to take risks increases as soon as they get a lower return than other people with whom they compare themselves. At the same time, decision-makers take lower risks if they get a higher return than their peers. The study was…
In Germany, a new stamp pays tribute to the European comet mission Rosetta.
The German postal service “Deutsche Post” has dedicated a stamp to ESA’s comet mission Rosetta. The stamp with a value of 60 cents is officially released today as part of a special series of stamps devoted to topics related to space and astrophysics. In addition to the Rosetta spacecraft, the motif shows part of the surface of Rosetta’s comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured by the onboard scientific camera system OSIRIS. “Seeing the Rosetta…
Göttingen researchers and international partners investigate situation in smallholder farming
A new study from the University of Göttingen and international partners has analysed the effects of Fairtrade certification on poor rural workers in Africa. The results show that Fairtrade improves the situation of employees in agricultural cooperatives, but not of workers in the smallholder farm sector, who are often particularly disadvantaged. The study was published in “Nature Sustainability”. When consumers of cocoa, coffee and other…
The neurobiologist is taking over this year's Rolf Sammet Guest Professorship at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The university honors Reinhard Jahn for his groundbreaking research on how biological membranes fuse.
Cell biologists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, together with colleagues, have now discovered a previously unknown structure in mammalian eggs that is indispensable for the error-free distribution of chromosomes.
When a new life begins, only half of the genetic information is provided by the egg, the other half comes from the sperm. To this end, the egg has to eliminate half of its chromosomes. This happens during a specialized cell division, called meiosis. This process, however, is error-prone: It can happen that too many or too few chromosomes remain in the egg, resulting in an embryo whose cells have an incorrect number of chromosomes. Such embryos…
Claudia Schmidt is the winner of the Three-Minute-Thesis Competition organized by the Coimbra Group, a network of leading European universities. With her short talk "The recycling system of our cells", the PhD student convinced the jury in the final contest in Krakow.
A group of red giants discovered four years ago seems to be old and young at the same time. Scientists now prove that they are indeed old – and a result of star mergers.
Four years ago, several red giant stars were discovered to pose a paradox: even though they are built from very old stellar material, their large masses indicate a clearly younger age. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany), Aarhus University (Denmark), and Ohio State University (USA) have now solved the apparent contradiction. For the first time, they investigated the abundances of carbon, nitrogen, and…
Sandra Schilbach, Agata Zielinska, and Thomas Lilienkamp of the Göttingen Max Planck Campus have been awarded the Otto Hahn Medal. Every year, the Max Planck Society honors up to 30 researchers for their outstanding achievements during their PhD.
Researchers from Göttingen publish global database of regional plant life
Declining biodiversity due to man-made habitat destruction and climate change means that information about plant diversity and its distribution across the planet is now crucial for biodiversity conservation. With the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT), a team of researchers from the Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography at the University of Göttingen has taken an important step forward in documenting and…
Senate votes for 50-year-old Economist – Foundation Committee confirms vote
The Swiss-German economist Professor (HSG) Sascha Spoun will become President of the University of Göttingen in 2020. This was agreed on Thursday 20 June 2019 by the University Senate with a large majority. The University Foundation Committee has already confirmed the election. Spoun succeeds Professor Ulrike Beisiegel, who has been in office since 1 January 2011. Spoun advised the Findungskommission of the Senate and the University Foundation…