Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Harald Schuh retired at the end of last year after twelve years at the GFZ. On 21 and 22 February, he was honoured and bid farewell as Director of Department 1 Geodesy with an international scientific colloquium at the GFZ.

Colloquium and farewell

Colleagues and former doctoral students of Harald Schuh, many of whom now hold a professorship themselves, gave specialist presentations to provide an insight into the development and numerous achievements, as well as current and future issues of geodesy - the measurement of the Earth in space and time - and thus also honoured the scientific merits of Harald Schuh's long and successful career.

The spectrum of topics ranged from future developments and combination strategies of space geodetic techniques and the contributions of techniques to urban mobility and environmental monitoring as well as the influences and modelling of the ionosphere to the importance of GFZ satellite missions – from GFZ-1 to GRACE-C – for observing the Earth's gravity field from space and the role of smartphones and AI in surveying the world.

Greeting from the Scientific Director of the GFZ, Susanne Buiter

In her welcoming address, Susanne Buiter, Scientific Director of the GFZ, gave an insight into the history of geodesy on Potsdam's Telegrafenberg – from its beginnings in the last decades of the 19th century to the present day.

She honoured Harald Schuh's services to the GFZ:

“The past twelve years at the GFZ have been characterised by several highlights to which Harald Schuh has contributed significantly. In particular, the satellite launches of GRACE-Follow On and EnMAP can be traced back to the work in his department.

In addition, there are thousands and thousands of scientific publications based on data from his department, not to forget the services for the international community of researchers in which Department 1 plays a key role, such as the IGS International GNSS Service, the ILRS International Laser Ranging Service and IVS International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry.

During his time at the GFZ, Harald Schuh has held continuous responsibility as Department Director and has always actively supported the centre as a whole, from the strategy process to the termination of his contract. We therefore say thank you on behalf of the GFZ and wish him all the best for the time after the GFZ.”

A long, successful career

The celebratory colloquium emphasised the breadth of Harald Schuh's forty years of work and his formative role in geodesy as well as his international networking and his commitment to young scientists.

Harald Schuh's scientific home is radio interference measurement with long baselines (VLBI, “Very Long Baseline Interferometry”), a method of radio astronomy for which he has rendered outstanding services. He began his scientific career in 1986 with a doctorate on this subject at the University of Bonn, where he subsequently also held a position as Associate Professor. After working at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Cologne and at the former academy institute DGFI in Munich, he became a professor in 2000 and Director of the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics at TU Wien in 2003.

In 2012, Harald Schuh joined the GFZ as Director of Department 1 “Geodesy” and took over the professorship for Satellite Geodesy at the TU Berlin in a joint appointment. At the same time, he headed Section 1.1 “Space Geodetic Techniques”, one of the largest sections at the GFZ. Here he rendered outstanding services by founding the VLBI working group, which is one of the largest research groups on VLBI worldwide. His work on modelling atmospheric effects and the Earth's rotation is particularly noteworthy. Harald Schuh initiated a wide range of national and international projects, including new observation concepts with transponders on satellites and in lunar orbit, and he was involved in various mission studies.

New approaches to combining space geodetic procedures - for example as part of the “GGOS-SIM” project and the DFG research group “Clock Metrology” - were studied under Harald Schuh's leadership, as were concepts for future navigation satellite systems, for example in the “Advantage” project. At an international level, Harald Schuh drove the global initiative that led to the adoption of the UN resolution on spatial reference – “A Global Geodetic Reference Frame for Sustainable Development” – in February 2015.

Harald Schuh has received numerous awards for his work. He received the Descartes Prize of the European Union in 2003, was made a Fellow of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) in 2007 and was awarded the Vening Meinesz Medal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in 2011. In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Geodesy (UACEG), Sofia, Bulgaria, and in 2017 he was elected a member of acatech – the German Academy of Science and Engineering. In 2022, the Geodesy Section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) honoured him with the “Ivan I. Mueller Award for Distinguished Service and Leadership”.

Supervising young scientists has always been an important concern for Harald Schuh. At the GFZ alone, he (co)supervised 28 doctoral theses. Many of his doctoral students received top honours.

Harald Schuh has also been involved in numerous scientific committees: Since 2020, he has been Chairman of the German Geodetic Commission (DGK), of which he has been a member since 2012. In addition, to name just a few examples, he was President of the Austrian Geodetic Commission (2008-2013), a member of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (2015-2019) and a member of the Helmholtz Think Tank (2016- 2020).