The new accommodations for the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMNS) was to be named after Frits Zernike, the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physics winner, but will now be named after the more recent Noble Prize winner. A copper bust of Feringa will also be made, joining a bust of Zernike on the wall in the lobby of the FMNS building.
‘A bigger gift’
That lobby was packed on Friday as dean Jasper Knoester addressed the laureate. ‘You’ve already received a toy Ferrari and a bottle of champagne, but of course you deserve a bigger gift.’
Even though it is unconventional to name a building for a research who is still alive and kicking, Knoester had good reason to go to the Board of Directors to request the name change. ‘There are no plans for a new faculty building for the next 40 years, and we didn’t want to wait until then. But you have to promise that you will behave.’
‘I will’, Feringa said, laughing. ‘I’m incredibly grateful for this fantastic gift. When I began studying here in 1970, this building was brand new. I still remember thinking how beautiful the new laboratories were. The new building being named after me is an enormous honour. But it will take some time to get used to the bust.’
No Zernikeborg
The name change means that there is no longer a building named after Zernike. Until 2014, the Centre for Information Technology was called Zernikeborg. With the new FMNS building on the horizon, the Board of Directors requested that CIT transfer the name to its ‘logical owner’, FMNS.
The CIT building was subsequently renamed Smitsborg in honour of ‘calculator programming’ professor and the first director of the Computingcentre, Donald Smits. Construction on the Feringa Building will begin 2017, and the building should be in use by 2022.