image: Prof. Andreas Macke, Director of TROPOS, was honoured at ELS2025 with the "Elsevier van de Hulst Prize for Light Scattering" 2025 for his contributions to the understanding of scattering properties of atmospheric ice crystals.
Credit: Alessandro Magazzu, CNR / ELS2025
Milazzo/Leipzig. Two researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) were honoured at the 21st International Electromagnetic and Light Scattering Conference in Milazzo, Italy:
Prof. Andreas Macke, Director of TROPOS was honoured with the "Elsevier van de Hulst Prize for Light Scattering" 2025 for his significant contributions to the understanding of scattering properties of atmospheric ice crystals. Prof Macke has developed and applied light scattering models based on geometrical optics for complex irregular ice crystals and thus achieved a breakthrough in the consideration of realistic crystal structures. His models and results are used worldwide in numerous scientific fields such as astrophysics, biology, medicine and, of course, atmospheric physics. The prize honours the life's work of an individual scientist who has made a pioneering contribution to the research field of electromagnetic scattering by particles and its applications.
Dr Moritz Haarig from TROPOS received the AS&T Young Scientist Award for the best presentation at the conference. The AS&T Award has been presented since 2025 for outstanding conference contributions by young scientists.
The "Elsevier van de Hulst Prize for Light Scattering" has been awarded by the editors and publisher of the Journal of Quantum Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer since 2010. The prize is named after the Dutch astronomer Hendrik C. van de Hulst, whose groundbreaking work includes the prediction of the 21-centimetre hyperfine line of neutral hydrogen in the universe and the co-discovery of the spiral structure of the Milky Way. The prize is awarded to scientists whose research has significantly advanced the understanding and application of light scattering theory and technology. Previous winners include scientists working at the interface between fundamental physics and applied science from all fields.
"I didn't get to know Prof van der Hulst personally, but I worked for two years as a postdoc at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he wrote his famous book "Light Scattering at Small Particles", and was at least able to experience the great impression Prof van de Hulst made there," says Andreas Macke. "Receiving a prize bearing his name is a great honour and an obligation for me to carry out application-oriented basic research in the best sense of Leibniz research."
The AS&T Young Scientist Award of the Aerosol Science & Technology Journal was presented for the first time this year. It honours the work of Dr Moritz Haarig and his Leibniz junior research group at TROPOS in setting up a new scattering laboratory. The Optical Lab for Lidar Applications (OLALA) is dedicated to the description of complex-shaped desert dust particles to improve remote sensing measurements from the ground and from space. This includes contributions from Esha Semwal in the experimental setup and from Thomas Oppermann in the modelling of non-spherical particles. The junior research group is funded by the Leibniz Association.