Met de val van Balkenende IV laait de discussie over het functioneren van politieke partijen binnen ons democratisch bestel weer op. Opgeblazen ego’s, overambitieuze politici en partijpolitieke machtspelletjes zouden echte democratie in de weg staan. Maar die discussie is niet nieuw.

The 20th anniversary of the Lorentz Center will be celebrated on 28 June 2017 with the opening of an exhibition in the Oude UB. For two decades already, the Center has been a place of retreat for groups of international academics who want to explore a single issue.

As part of the celebrations around the 25th birthday of the Faculty of Archaeology, a panel discussion on the future of archaeology was organised on December 13th. For this discussion an international panel of scholars was invited to give their perspective and enter into conversation with our Faculty…

On Friday 29 August, the Wijnhaven was filled with a special mix of first-year students just beginning their academic journey, and students who, after 1,089 days of intensive study, were awarded their Bachelor’s degree in Security Studies. In two festive sessions, a total of 223 students received their…

An international team of astronomers, including Leiden PhD student Elia Pizzati, has observed several ancient quasars that, surprisingly, appear to be floating alone in the early universe (less than a billion years after the Big Bang). Until now, astronomers, based on models, assumed that quasars are…

Two Leiden astronomers will receive the prestigious IAU PhD Prize. Both Jorryt Mathee and Niels Ligterink of the Leiden Observatory won a prize. Scientific director Huub Röttgering: We are proud that this year two of our PhD students receive an IAU prize for the best thesis in their field of researc…

Joseph Callingham from the Leiden Observatory receives the Louise Webster Prize for outstanding post-doctoral research. The prize is awarded by the Astronomical Society of Australia for Callingham’s search for the most extreme object in the Universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to surprise us with stunning pictures, but of what exactly? Astronomer Nienke van der Marel shows with three images how massive stars lead short but explosive lives.

Research using the ALMA telescope by scientists including Leiden's John Tobin and Steven Bos has produced the first images of the water snow line within a protoplanetary disc. Publication in Nature on 14 July.

SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is moving. In 2021, the Utrecht branch will settle in South Holland. Assistant professor at TU Delft, Akira Endo leads a project that builds a state-of-the-art instrument for astronomical research. ‘SRON is the key to go from proof-of-concept to a science-grade…

Not only dark matter, but also ordinary matter and dark energy are tracked in the largest ever cosmological computer simulation ever. In the FLAMINGO simulations, you can see virtual galaxies and clusters of galaxies emerging over the course of billions of years. This is no easy task: with more than…

Cornelia Pabst is a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory, whose research is based around primary data taken by instruments onboard SOFIA, an airplane-based observatory on which she has flown multiple times. Pabst explains how this airplane has impacted her research career and gives her views on the ever-present…

‘I got into Nature last year, I was nominated for a faculty teaching award and my kids don’t care. But if your simulations get on The Big Bang Theory then that’s something!’ says Huib van Langevelde.

Eleven Leiden researchers have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant will enable them to develop their research ideas for a period of three years.

On Monday 27 September 2010 Spinoza prize winners Naomi Ellemers, Ineke Sluiter, Marijn Franx (Leiden) and Piet Gros (Utrecht) announced their plans for their €2.5 million prize money. This was during the official ceremony in The Hague, at which the outgoing Secretary of State for Education, Culture…

At the beginning of 2020, Maite Boden became the first student ever to receive the Young Star award. She received the award for her contribution to research into the notorious ghost particle: the neutrino. With her master's degree in the pocket as well, she is now looking for a job in data analysis.…

From a new generation of antibiotics and more-effective vaccines to a map of dark matter and new light on Hindu traditions. Four researchers from Leiden University have received a prestigious €2.5m ERC Advanced Grant to develop their research.

The Edinburgh Medal 2016 had been awarded to both Kevin Govender of the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The award is a recognition for furthering education and technological capacity worldwide through the inspirational science of astronomy. The…

By a stroke of luck, a team led by Dutch PhD student Martijn Oei has discovered a radio galaxy of at least 16 million lightyears long. The pair of plasma plumes is the largest structure made by a galaxy known thus far. The finding disproves some long-kept hypotheses about the growth of radio galaxie…

Astronomy can help address the problems of South Africa, while benefiting other African countries at the same time. This was the message of Naledi Pandor, South African Minister of Science and Technology, on 26 February in the Academy Building.

Simulations of galaxy formation provide much more information about galaxies than a telescope. Simulations have been improving significantly in recent years. Astronomer Evgenii Chaikin made such a significant contribution to this field that he graduated with honours on February 27th.

With the new Euclid satellite, scientists are going to map a large part of the sky. The satellite ofthe European Space Agency (ESA) will soon give them a better view of the galaxies and matter in the universe. Professor of Galactic Astronomy Koen Kuijken and a team of Dutch scientists are receiving…

In the discs of dust and gasses around young stars, mysterious structures occur. Together with professor Ewine van Dishoeck, PhD student Paolo Cazzoletti investigate how we can explain these forms, such as rings, spirals and holes. On 12 December, he will defend his thesis.

LIACS assistant professor Ben van Werkhoven leads the development of software for optimising graphics processing units. By now, version 1.0 of 'Kernel Tuner' is just around the corner. This milestone shows that the software is ready for serious use.

The directorate of the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) has two new members. Ronald Stark (currently at NWO) will be the new Executive Director of NOVA from 1 September. Amina Helmi (Professor of Dynamics, structure and formation of the Milky Way at the University of Groningen) will…

Pope Francis has appointed astronomer Ewine van Dishoeck to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. She joins an illustrious list of Nobel Prize winners, such as Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger. What is her view on this? An interview with our professor of Molecular astrop…

On 15 May, the ambassadors of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries were shown the highlights of research at Leiden University Faculty of Science. Furthermore, Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme awarded prizes to two young academics who conduct research in Latin America.

Galaxies in the early universe are shrouded in a kind of mist: a cloud of hydrogen. With galaxies in the later universe this mist has disappeared. Astronomer Jorryt Matthee has made the first images of this dissipating mist. PhD defence 19 September.

Lecture

PhD defence

PhD defence

Data from 41 million galaxies does not shake up the standard cosmological model after all. To that conclusion, to their own surprise, comes an international team of researchers including Koen Kuijken, professor at the Leiden Observatory.

An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published hundreds of thousands of unknown galaxies. The data are part of a project lead by Leiden professor of Observational cosmology Huub Röttgering. Both Dutch and international media reported extensively about the publica…

An international team of astronomers has shown that a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbiting each other every two hours are emitting radio pulses. Through the discovery, astronomers now know that the monopoly on bright radio bursts is not solely held by neutron stars. The team of international scientists…

As of 1 October Rob van Nieuwpoort is the new professor of Efficient Computing and eScience at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). Van Nieuwpoort brings with him a wealth of expertise: he is an expert in eScience, high performace computing and advanced algorithms.

Joop Schaye, Professor of The formation of galaxies, has been elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He will be officially inaugurated on 29 September.

January is the final month of our temporary exhibition 'Above and Beyond: Making Sense of the Universe for 100 Years'. You can visit every weekend until Jauary 26th.

A glittering visualisation of dark matter by Dutch artist Thijs Biersteker is on display in the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin. The installation – ‘Dark Distortions’ – was inspired by Euclid, a forthcoming ESA mission to study the mysterious nature of dark matter. Leiden astronomer Henk Hoekstra…

‘The Oscars of the natural sciences’, is what they are called: the Breakthrough Prizes awarded annually in America by the Breakthrough Foundation. Part of this are the New Horizons prizes for early-stage researchers. Sebastiaan Haffert, researcher at the Observatory, is this year's winner.

Cosmologists have many possible models for the Universe, of which only one can be true. A new flowchart will eliminate some of them when two specific Universe features are accurately measured. Publication in Physical Review D on 7 November.

Starting April 13 a brand new exhibition is open for visit, titled 'Above and Beyond: Making Sense of the Universe for 100 Years

Up above the world so high a giant star twinkles. Could an 83-year-old astronomer unravel the mystery of this megastar? ‘At times I thought: that’s it! I give up! It’s beyond me.’

On Thursday November 15th, Leiden University organizes its Physics & Astronomy Ladies' Day for female high school students. To mark this festive day, we put the spotlight on five female researchers, who talk about their experiences working in science.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2021, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

By working together with external social partners, the knowledge of our scientists finds its way into society.

On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2025, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Psychologen laten zich horen over de plannen om de internationale bacheloropleidingen op te heffen in de Randstad en Tilburg. Het inititatief #Ikbeneenpsycholoog van Judith Schomaker op LinkedIn vindt navolging. Lees een selectie van de posts en ook het blog van Eiko Fried over de consequenties.

Psychologist Bernou Melisse was shocked at the long waiting lists in the Netherlands for people with binge-eating disorders. The problem was not yet on the map in Saudi Arabia. She therefore decided to study how people suffering from binge eating can be helped better in their own region of the world.…