On Friday, February 19,2016, Professor Dr. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Horst Stöcker was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. Stöcker was awarded "for outstanding contributions to the progress of science and for the training of young scientists". The award was presented by the director of JINR, Professor Victor Matveev, at the meeting of the Scientific Council of JINR, of which Horst Stöcker has been a member for many years.

Horst Stöcker is a board member and senior fellow of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and Judah M. Eisenberg Professor Laureatus of the Goethe University Frankfurt as well as senior researcher in the research department "Theory" of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt.

The former vice-president of Goethe University, who was GSI's scientific director from 2007 to 2015 and two times vice-president of the Helmholtz Association, is one of the founding fathers of FIAS. He has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

In his diploma thesis more than 40 years ago, Stöcker analyzed some of the earliest data from the JINR accelerator synchrophasotron, the first relativistic heavy ion accelerator. In recent years, Stöcker has made scientific contributions to understanding the dynamics of hadron and heavy ion impacts as well as the underlying phase structure of quantum chromodynamics on the NICA collider, which is currently being built at JINR, and on the complementary high-energy colliders RHIC in the USA and LHC in Switzerland. Stöcker was particularly interested in clarifying the differentiation to the FAIR accelerator complex with its unique selling points - highest intensities and qualities of the radiation of heavy ions, antiprotons and strange matter up to unknown isotopes.

Other recipients of the JINR honorary doctorate were Professor Jemal Khubua, Professor at the University of Tbilsi, Georgia, and Professor Yuri Oganessian, Element Detector and Head of the Flerov Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions at JINR.

The JINR is an international centre for research into the fundamentals and applications of nuclear physics, whose foundation will take place for the sixtieth time this year - it was founded almost simultaneously in Dubna as a counterpart to the CERN research centre in Switzerland.

Prof. Stöcker was awarded an honorary doctorate in addition to his outstanding research achievements, also for his commitment to young scientists. He is co-founder of the "Frankfurt International Graduate School for Science (FIGSS)".