May 10, 2006 | News

MPIDR scientist to be awarded a prize for his Ph.D. dissertation

Dr. Roland Rau, who is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, will be awarded the Otto-Hahn Medal at this year's Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society in Frankfurt/Main in recognition of his work entitled "Seasonality in human mortality: a demographic approach", a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Rostock in 2005. The prize, awarded by the Max Planck Society and named after its former president and Nobel laureate, Otto Hahn, is issued to up to 40 young scientists a year in recognition of outstanding scientific achievements. With it comes the opportunity of a one year research stay abroad.

Roland Rau's dissertation has broadened considerably the picture we so far have had of seasonal mortality. Biomedical approaches, up to now predominant in the analysis of this phenomenon, have not explained in full the low excess mortality currently observed in winter in the northern European countries, for example. Socio-economic factors, such as educational attainment, are coming now to the fore. The results of the dissertation also make a valuable contribution to improving the identification of possible risk groups, i.e. single people and persons of low educational attainment, besides the elderly and those suffering from ill-health.