Gerard Meijer (1962) studied Physics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, where he also completed his PhD in 1988. Subsequently, he worked for two years as an assistant researcher at IBM in the United States (San José, California 1989/90). After one year as a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) affiliated to VU University Amsterdam (1991), he returned to Nijmegen as an associate professor (1992). Later he was appointed professor of Experimental Physics (1995), in which capacity he started the research that brought him international fame: in 1999, his Nijmegen research group was the first to decelerate a beam of molecules to almost standstill.

In 2000 he became director of the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen, and in 2002 director of the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) in Berlin, where, under his leadership, techniques were developed to achieve full control over molecules in a gas, important to further fundamental research. In September 2012, he accepted the “call of duty” to serve as President of the Executive Board of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, his alma mater, a position that he held until the beginning of 2017. Since January 2017, he has been reappointed as director of the FHI in Berlin.

Gerard Meijer has co-authored about 400 articles in refereed scientific journals that have received a total of over 22.000 citations; his h-index is 75. Fourty-five Ph.D. students have completed their Ph.D. research under his supervision.
He has received various awards for his scientific work and for his service to academia. In 2009 he received the Bourke Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry for his original research into the formation and spectroscopy of ultra-cold molecules. In 2010 Gerard Meijer acquired an ERC Advanced Grant. In 2012, he was awarded the Van 't Hoff Prize in Germany for his outstanding contributions to physical chemistry. In 2013 he has been elected as a member of the Academia Europaea and in 2017 he received a royal decoration and became Knight in the Order of the Netherlands' Lion.
During his presidency at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, he has been leading, on behalf of the VSNU (the Association of Universities in The Netherlands), the negotiations with the main publishers on the renewal of the journal subscriptions (the “Big Deals”) and on the transition to Open Access. At present, he is member of the team that negotiates with the publishers on behalf of all the universities and scientific organizations in Germany (the DEAL-negotiation team) to try to reach much further going arrangements in Germany.

Vidéo de l'intervention (lien à copier/coller) : https://webcast.in2p3.fr/video/discours-de-cloture-journee-la-science-ouverte-une-revolution-necessaire