Günter Hotz named honorary citizen of St. Ingbert

Günter Hotz receives the certificate of honorary citizenship from Mayor Prof. Dr. Ulli Meyer. Photo: SIC/Philipp Zapf-Schramm

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Günter Hotz is the founder of Saarbrücken Computer Science and is considered one of the fathers of computer science in Germany. For more than three decades, he taught and conducted research as Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Saarland University. During this time, he set the course for important settlement projects on the university campus and in the Saarland and thus made a significant contribution to shaping structural change in the region. Because of his many achievements, Günter Hotz has now been named an honorary citizen of his hometown of St. Ingbert at a ceremony in the lecture hall named after him at Saarland University.

Around 70 guests were present at the ceremonial conferral of honorary citizenship in the Günter Hotz Lecture Hall at Saarland University. After accepting the honorary citizenship certificate from the mayor of Sankt Ingbert, Prof. Dr. Ulli Meyer, Professor Hotz signed the Golden Book of the town where he has lived since 1972.

The great appreciation for the now 91-year-old Professor Günter Hotz was clearly felt throughout the event. In addition to Saarland University President Prof. Dr. Manfred Schmitt, all of the partner institutes of the Saarland Informatics Campus in whose founding Günter Hotz was instrumentally involved, also paid their respects: CEO Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger for the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Director Prof. Dr. Raimund Seidel spoke for the Leibniz Center for Computer Science at Dagstuhl Castle, and Managing Director Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt represented the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. Another greeting was given by Mayor Prof. Dr. Ulli Meyer, and the event was moderated by the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Steimle.

The laudation for Günter Hotz was given by Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c.. Wolffried Stucky from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), who was one of Günter Hotz’s first students. In addition to the successes in the strategic development of the Saarbrücken computer science location, Prof. Stucky in his laudation particularly addressed Hotz’s impact as an academic teacher and noted that in the now sixth generation hundreds of academic descendants can be traced back to Hotz.

The ceremony was followed by a reception in honor of the jubilarian in the foyer of the Günter Hotz lecture hall. The event was organized by the Department of Computer Science at Saarland University in cooperation with the city of St. Ingbert and the alumni network „Freunde der Saarbrücker Informatik FdSI e.V.”, of which Günter Hotz is an honorary member.

Background Saarland Informatics Campus:
900 scientists (including 400 PhD students) and about 2500 students from more than 80 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for computer science in Germany and Europe. Four world-renowned research institutes, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the Center for Bioinformatics as well as Saarland University with three departments and 24 degree programs cover the entire spectrum of computer science.

Editor:
Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Saarland Informatics Campus
Phone: +49 681 302-70741
E-Mail: pzapf@cs.uni-saarland.de