IAP: an institute of the Leibniz Association

History, legal aspects, organizational entities

Following a recommendation of the Wissenschaftsrat (a scientific panel of the federal government of Germany) the Institut für Atmosphärenphysik an der Universität Rostock e.V. was founded on January 1, 1992. The institute is a independent scientific organization, funded primarily by the federal government of Germany and the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It belongs to a group of institutes which were founded on the basis of an agreement between the federal government and the local states and which were originally called Blaue Liste Institute.

In 1995 most of these institutes became members of the new organization Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Blaue Liste (WBL), which was renamed to Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (WGL) in 1997. Since October 18, 1998, the official name of our institute is Leibniz-Institut für Atmosphärenphysik e.V. an der Universität Rostock.

In 1992 Prof. Dr. Hans Hinzpeter was commissioned to organize the foundation of the IAP. On April 1, 1993, Prof. Dr. Ulf von Zahn was nominated the first director of the IAP. Prof. von Zahn retired in spring 1999 and Prof. Dr. Franz-Josef Lübken, formerly at the Physics Institute of Bonn University, became the new director on September 1, 1999. On October 1st, 2021 Prof. Dr. Claudia Stolle, previously head of the "Geomagnetism" section at GFZ Potsdam, has been appointed director of the institute.

The IAP is organized as an association (german: eingetragener Verein, e.V.). The bodies within this association are

• the board of members
• the board of trustees
• the directorate of the institute

The latter two are supported by a science advisory panel (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat) which revisits and recommends strategies for the scientific topics investigated at the IAP. The board of members and the science advisory panel meet once per year, the board of trustees once or twice per year.