Honorary doctorates awarded by the Department of Research and Teaching at the University Medical Center Mainz

On 17 June 2014, University Medical Center Mainz awarded Carl Djerassi (*29 October 1923 in Vienna, Austria, † 30 January 2015) an honorary doctorate. Carl Djerassi, a biochemist, inventor of the contraceptive pill, and man of letters, was  particularly associated with the Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine at the University Medical Center Mainz.

 
Carl Djerassi was an internationally renowned biochemist. He was instrumental in the development of the contraceptive pill and thus achieved a milestone in the history of medicine. For several decades he wrote literary works which portray the interfaces at which individuals, the life sciences, and biomedicine meet. In doing so, he opened up a new perspective on the reciprocal relationship between life and the life sciences.
Back in May 2005, he visited the Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine at the University Medical Center Mainz and discussed the history, social perception and ethical dimension of reproductive medicine with doctoral candidates. The connection to the institute in Mainz arose thanks to a guest lectureship at Stanford University held by the current director of the Institute for History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine at the University Medical Center Mainz, Professor

Norbert W. Paul.About Carl Djerassi
Carl Djerassi was born in Vienna on 29 October 1923, the son of two Jewish physicians. He emigrated with his mother to escape Nazism to the United States, where, after attending school at Kenyon College and the University of Wisconsin, he completed his academic training with honors. Carl Djerassi was both a chemist and a writer of world renown. Luis E. Miramontes and Djerassi, as researchers for Syntex S.A. in Mexico City in the early 1950s, succeeded in artificially synthesizing the sex hormone norethisterone, a progestogen. Together with Gregory Pincus and John Rock, they developed this to create the first birth control pill in 1951. In his autobiography, he referred to himself as the “mother of the pill”, considering himself to be only the chemical inventor of the pill. Djerassi taught at Stanford University from 1959. As a scientist, he published 1200 papers.

In the mid-1980s, he started his career as a novelist, founding a new genre he referred to as “science-in-fiction” that resulted in his tetralogy Cantor’s Dilemma, The Bourbaki Gambit, Menachem’s Seed and NO. He also wrote dramas, notably Foreplay: Hannah Arendt, the Two Adornos and Walter Benjamin. The drama was published in book form in English, German, and Spanish.

This was not the sole connection between Carl Djerassi and the Rhine-Main region/Mainz. Back in 2005, he visited the University Medical Center Mainz and held a workshop, gave a public lecture, and presented a staged performance at the Institute of the History, Philosophy, and Ethics of Medicine in the Frankfurter Hof. 

Carl Djerassi died on 30 January 2015 at his home in San Francisco at the age of 91 from complications of liver and bone cancer.

In 2009, the US-American Professor James E. Baumgardner was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.With the doctorate, the faculty recognized, on the one hand, his outstanding scientific achievements and his extraordinary life’s work, which was shaped by his scientific research. On the other hand, the faculty honored his sustained and particularly effective involvement in the DFG Research Group Radiology/Anesthesiology, which was established at the University Medical Center Mainz in 2003 and continued in the form of a DFG package proposal in 2009. Baumgardner, an anesthesiologist, developed, among other things, a measuring technique for differentiated lung diagnostics, which was employed at the University Medical Center Mainz as the first center in the world to do so.
For many years, Professor
Baumgardner was among a select group of close cooperation partners of the University Medical Center Mainz.After successfully completing his medical studies at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania (Penn Medicine), Professor James E. Baumgardner (b. 1955 in Oil City, Pennsylvania) earned his MD in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the same university a year later in 1985.He then completed postgraduate training at Penn Medicine and elsewhere until 1989. In 1989, he became an associate professor there in the fields of anesthesiology (until 1999) and bioengineering (until 1994). From 1999 to 2008, he held an associate professorship at Penn Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology.
He was also active outside the university, serving from 1999 to 2002 as a senior consultant scientist for SpectruMedix, a Pennsylvania-based company. In 2003, he headed as an independent entrepreneur the firm Oscillogy LLC in Pennsylvania, a medical device manufacturer.
Professor
Baumgardner is a member of the American Board of Anesthesiology.His main research interests include the development of technical devices for lung function analysis and cell culture-based investigations. His medical specialties include image-guided lung function analysis using hyperpolarized gases in magnetic resonance imaging and calculation of ventilation-perfusion distributions in the lung using the multiple inert gas elimination technique.

In 2009, the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz awarded Professor Andreas Barner an honorary doctorate.In the laudatory encomium, it was pointed out that the former chairman of Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH Barner can be considered to have been a key figure in the promotion of Mainz as a research hub.
Andreas Barner, born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1953, received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Freiburg and his Dr. sc. math. from the ETH Zurich – the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. From 1979 to 1983 he held a post as a research assistant at the ETH. He then held key research and positions in the research and development department at the pharmaceutical company Ciba-Geigy AG in Basel, where he most recently headed the development sector “Inflammation/bone and allergy diseases.” From 1992, Andreas Barner headed the Medical Department and then the Medical Division at Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, which is involved in clinical research throughout the world. He was appointed to the board in 1999, where he was responsible for the business segment Pharmaceuticals Research, Development and Medicine, and became chairman of Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH in 2009. Barner, a native of Breisgau, has been a member of the Executive Board of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) and, from 2007, a member of the German Council of Science and Humanities, which advises the German federal government and the governments of the German states on issues relating to the content and structural development of universities, science, and research.

In 2009, the Faculty of Medicine of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz awarded an honorary doctorate to Professor E. Jürgen Zöllner.Zöllner is regarded as one of the most experienced education and science policymakers in Germany, who paved the way for the University Medical Center Mainz in its current form. He also pioneered cutting-edge medical research at Mainz, playing a key role in the construction of the first research utility building at the site of the University Medical Center Mainz in 1989.
Zöllner, born in 1945 in Mährisch Neustadt, studied medicine at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz until 1969. After receiving his doctorate in 1970, he worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In 1975, Zöllner completed his habilitation and in 1977, at the age of 32, he became one of the youngest professors in Germany, being appointed Professor of Physiological Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University. He served as Vice President of Johannes Gutenberg University from 1983 to 1990 and then as its President until 1991. In the same year, he was appointed Minister of Science of the State Government of Rhineland-Palatinate, later also becoming head of the education department. From 2001, he was Minister for Science, Further Education, Research and Culture in Rhineland-Palatinate following a reorganization of his department, and in 2006 he became Deputy Minister-President of the state. That same year, he moved to the Berlin Senate, where he served as Senator for Education, Science and Research until 18 September 2011. In addition, in 2007  Zöllner became President of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) and in 2008 he became Chairman of the Standing Conference of Ministers of Youth and Family Affairs.  From 2008 to 2011, he also served on the Joint Science Conference (GWK) of the German federal and state governments, whose chair he alternated annually with the Federal Minister of Education and Research. He has been on the board of the Einstein Foundation since 1 January 2012.

In 2009, Helmut Fahlbusch was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University. The  faculty was thus recognizing his extensive involvement in the Advisory Board of the University Medical Center Mainz. A former spokesman for the Management Board of Mainz-based Schott AG, Fahlbusch is considered a driving force and one of the key pioneers of the University Medical Center Mainz in its current corporate form. For example, he actively helped shape and support the process of reform that transformed the University Hospital into the University Medical Center Mainz in early 2009.
Born in Hanover in 1933, Helmut Fahlbusch completed training as an industrial clerk at Continental Gummi-Werke in Hanover.  He was then entrusted with various sales and marketing tasks in Germany until 1967. From 1968 to 1974, he served as commercial director of Usine Francaise des Pneumatique Continental, based in Paris. In 1975, he joined Schott Glaswerke, initially as head of central marketing and commercial manager of the electronics business division. From 1983 onwards, Fahlbusch headed various departments within the company as a general representative. In 1988, he was appointed to the Management Board and in 1993 became Spokesperson of the international technology group. He served on the supervisory boards of a number of institutions and companies and resigned his last seat on the Supervisory Board of the University Medical Center Mainz at the end of 2009. In addition to a number of other honors, Fahlbusch was awarded the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Professor Trentz, a renowned trauma surgeon, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Medicine of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2007.The faculty was thus recognizing his outstanding contribution to the promotion of the field of trauma surgery in the German-speaking world and in Europe.
Otmar L. Trentz, born in Trier in 1942, studied medicine at the University of Cologne and the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. After gaining his doctorate in 1967, he initially worked at the University Hospital Würzburg in the fields of internal medicine and gynecology, among others. In 1974, Otmar Trentz became an attending surgeon at the Hannover Medical School. In 1977, he gained his habilitation, and in 1980 he became head of the Trauma Surgery Department at the school.  In 1983, he took up a professorship in surgery at Saarland University in its Trauma Surgery Department. From 1990 to 2008, he held the Chair of Trauma Surgery at the University of Zurich. In 2008, Otmar Trentz became an emeritus professor. A native of Trier, he has had a total of 256 papers published in medical journals (as of May 2010).

In 2004, the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University awarded an honorary doctorate to Professor Willi Schulte. The faculty honored Willi Schulte as an outstanding personality of international standing in the context of his achievements in teaching, research and patient care. Formerly Director of the Department of Dental Surgery and Periodontology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, he initiated, among other things, Collaborative Research Center 175 “Implantology” of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Tübingen. His work on intraoral wound healing and blood coagulation set standards. The “Tübingen immediate implant” developed by him was the departure point for a paradigm shift in dentistry. Using the Tübingen immediate implant, it became possible to functionally preserve alveolar bone after tooth loss. During his lifetime, Schulte was in close contact with the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University Medical Center Mainz, where he was instrumental in advancing the field of implantology.
Willi Schulte, born in Hamm/Westphalia in 1929, studied dentistry at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. After receiving his license to practice dentistry and his doctorate in 1953, he held a position there as a research assistant. In 1963, he gained his habilitation and became a senior physician at the surgery outpatient clinic at the University of Tübingen. From 1968 to 1972  he was an adjunct professor and head of the Department of Experimental Dental Surgery. In 1972, he was appointed full professor of dental surgery and periodontology in Tübingen and served as medical director of the outpatient clinic of the same name until 1995. Between 1974 and 1979, he was the director of the outpatient clinic for dental surgery and periodontology at the University of Tübingen. From 1985 to 1996 he was spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Center “Implantology” at the University of Tübingen.