As an experimental physicist, I am conducting research into a new definition of time with the “nuclear clock”. Last year, we succeeded for the first time in exciting a thorium-229 isotope atomic nucleus in a targeted manner using a laser. It is now conceivable that nuclear clocks will replace the atomic clocks currently in use. The new “quantum physics with nuclei” has many other possible applications, from information storage to very high-energy lasers.

Freedom and time: To conduct successful research in time measurement, I need a top international university with proper laboratories and continuous substantial funding – the TU Wien and the FWF, ERC, etc. have given me that. And I need freedom and time – it took 15 years from purely theoretical considerations to an experimental breakthrough.

I try to get involved beyond my personal research, I have been involved as head of an institute and dean, on the board of directors of the Young Curia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and on the presidium of the WPI. We scientists in Austria should not forget how well we are doing here and now. But we should also not forget that our – despite all justified individual criticism – very well-functioning science system can tip over again. This is even happening within the EU, as our neighboring country Hungary shows, where the media, art and universities are losing their freedom.

Courage: We are currently in the throes of a transition to a new political era in which supposedly simple solutions are offered for complex social issues and problems. We scientists must remain critical and, if necessary, raise our voices if serious science and the important foundations behind it are to be communicated. The word “professor” comes from “professio”, the public confession of what one has recognized to be true to the best of one’s knowledge and belief. And not just in self-affirming academic circles like here at the Science Ball, but in the general population and among politicians. It is always counterproductive to exclude people and parties and refuse dialogue. In all parties in Austria, there are also reasonable politicians who are interested in factually good solutions and who will definitely listen to us if we approach them with commitment. Let’s move boldly into the new era!

Thorsten Schumm, professor at the Vienna University of Technology and full member of the WPI, is one of Austria’s leading experimental physicists, with breakthroughs in the “nuclear clock”, among other things. Born in Berlin, he completed his doctorate under Nobel Prize winner Alain Aspect at Paris Sud and Jörg Schmiedmayer in Heidelberg. He has received, among other things, the START Prize, an ERC Starting Grant and an ERC Synergy Grant. As deputy director of the CNRS Pauli Institute, he represents the official organizer of the Science Ball, the Wolfgang Pauli Institute.