International Quantum Symposium in Honor of Gerd Leuchs, Founding Director of MPL
To mark the 75th (+1) birthday of Gerd Leuchs, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL), an international symposium was held on June 25 and 26, 2026. Over the course of two days, renowned international scientists and colleagues of Gerd Leuchs provided insights into current research topics and developments in quantum sciences and technologies.
Twenty-seven active program partners and over 100 participants joined the symposium in Erlangen to celebrate Prof. Gerd Leuchs’s scientific career spanning five decades. He is regarded as the founding father of the first Max Planck Institute of Northern Bavaria, which opened in 2009. This was reason enough to mark his 76th birthday by joining forces with his colleagues to highlight the extraordinary life journey and the scientific legacy of the emeritus director – which continues to this day.
MPL Director and Head of the Theoretical Physics Division, Prof. Florian Marquardt, opened the symposium together with Prof. Gerd Leuchs. In his welcoming remarks, Marquardt highlighted the key milestones in Leuchs’ journey toward founding the institute: Starting as a professor of physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and head of the Institute of Optics, Leuchs established a Max Planck research group on “Optics, Information, and Photonics” in Erlangen in 2002, which gave rise to today’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in 2009. In 2016, exactly 10 years ago, the institute moved into its own building on Staudtstraße.
Marquardt named Prof. Herbert Walther – Leuchs’s doctoral advisor, who remained an important scientific advisor and friend throughout his life – as one of his most significant mentors. He also mentioned his fellow director Prof. Philip Russell, who came to Erlangen in 2007, as well as Sir Peter L. Knight, who, as chair of the evaluation committee, helped set the course for the institute’s founding. Both Russell and Knight actively participated in the program as speakers.
The scientific focus of the conference, which among other things included two panel discussions, was aligned with the founding director’s primary research areas at the intersection of classical optics and quantum optics. These include interferometry, microscopy, quantum metrology, and quantum information processing – fields that Leuchs has helped shape. Other topics featured were quantum communication – including via free-space and satellite links – fiber optics, nonlinear quantum optics, and fundamental research in quantum optics. The speakers included renowned representatives of the scientific community. In addition to Knight and Russell, Prof. Wolfgang Schleich, Prof. Peter Lambropoulos, Prof. Elisabeth Giacobino, Prof. Robert Boyd, Prof. Maria Chekhova, Prof. Christine Silberhorn, Prof. Peter Drummond, Prof. Margaret Reid, Prof. Klaus Rith, Prof. Luis Sánchez-Soto, Prof. Natalia Korolkova, Prof. Andreas Tünnermann, and Prof. Ulrik Andersen all spoke, among others. The panel discussions featured Prof. Berge Englert, Prof. Janos Bergou, Prof. Gunnar Björk, Prof. Norbert Lütkenhaus, and Prof. Christopher Eichler.
In the presentations – which successfully blended past research achievements with current scientific projects in quantum science and technology – the speakers painted a portrait of an extraordinary physicist: curious, brilliant, yet humble.
One message ran consistently through the presentations – while Gerd Leuchs may no longer hold an official title as director emeritus, his calling as a scientist will never end.
The scientific program was accompanied by great joy among the participants at seeing each other again. As Knight remarked on the sidelines of the conference: “He’s a friend of great brilliance. So, you know, we really wanted to be able to celebrate his enormous achievements. […] Gerd ran a meeting in Munich to see whether it was possible for people working together to do something that would really change our ability, for example, to measure gravity waves. And that was the most extraordinary thing because it propelled this whole community forward in a new direction.”
Russell adds: “He’s been a wonderful colleague. Very supportive, a fantastic problem solver. […] He would always know who to call up and talk to and see to sort problems out. So wonderful. I mean, he has really made this institute happen, it’s because of his skills with people, his ability to influence people, to persuade people. That has given Middle Franconia this Max Planck institute.”
© Photos: MPL
