The lecture will be held in English, and a discussion will follow. The event is free of charge and open to the public. A musical accompaniment will be provided by Andreas Buschatz and Sunyung Hwang (violin).

Paul J. Crutzen was born in 1933 in Amsterdam. After completing his education as a civil engineer, in 1959 he began studying mathematics, statistics, and meteorology at Stockholm University. Crutzen's research focuses mainly on the natural and anthropogenic influences on the ozone layer.  From 1977 to 1980 Crutzen was Director of Research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and from 1980 until his retirement in 2000, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. He also conducted research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

The Einstein Lectures Dahlem lecture series, hosted by Freie Universität Berlin and several external institutions, is dedicated to the epochal work of Albert Einstein. Einstein was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics for almost two decades. Held in the Berlin district of Dahlem, traditionally a center of scientific research, the Einstein Lectures Dahlem series presents a first-rate, interdisciplinary colloquium once each semester. The lectures address a broad academic public and cover various scientific disciplines influenced by Einstein’s thinking. Previous speakers in this series were Hans Frauenfelder, Stephen Hawking, Theodor W. Hänsch, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Günter Dosch, Hans Specht, and the art historian Martin Kemp.