Habilitation (lat. habilis - fit, proper, skillfull) is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis (often known as a Habilitationsschrift, or Habilitation thesis) based on independent scholarship, reviewed by and defended before an academic committee in a process similar to that for the doctoral dissertation. However, the level of scholarship has to be considerably higher than that required for a research doctoral (PhD) thesis in terms of quality and quantity, and must be accomplished independently, in contrast with a PhD dissertation typically directed or guided by a faculty supervisor.^[1][2]

In the sciences, publication of 10 to more than 30 research articles is required during the habilitation period of about 4 to 10 years. Sometimes (in the humanities) a major book publication is required before defense takes place. Usually the teaching ability of the habilitation candidate is evaluated as well. Thus, the level of academic achievement can be compared in many aspects to a North American tenure review but can take even longer. However, the outcome of the successful habilitation examination is a degree-like professorial certification rather than a tenured position. Whereas in the United States, the United Kingdom and most other countries, the PhD is sufficient qualification for a faculty position at a university, in other countries only the habilitation qualifies the holder to independently supervise doctoral candidates. Such a post is known in Germany as Privatdozent and there are similarly termed posts elsewhere. After service as a Privatdozent, one may be summoned to the faculty as a professor.

Habilitation qualification exists in France (Habilitation à diriger des recherches, "accreditation to supervise research", abbreviated HDR), Switzerland, Germany (Priv.-Doz. and/or Dr. habil.), Austria (formerly Univ.-Doz., now Priv.-Doz.), Denmark, Bulgaria, Poland (dr hab., doktor habilitowany), Portugal (Agregação), Sweden and Finland (Docent or Doc.) the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Docent), Hungary (Dr. habil.), Slovenia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Lithuania (Habil. dr.), Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (Doktor nauk). A similar qualification known as Livre-docência still exists in some private universities at Brazil, and at a university in state of São Paulo, but has disappeared in other parts of Brazil. In Spain it is called "acreditación"^[3] and it is a requirement for access to some kinds of posts in state-owned universities. Similarly, the so-called Libera docenza existed in Italy until 1970. The habilitation, derived from the Medieval Latin habilitare — "make suitable, fit" — developed in the eighteenth century.

The word habilitation can be used to describe the qualification or the process of earning it. It is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to the thesis written as part of that process (what is called Habilitationsschrift in German). A successful habilitation requires that the candidate (called Habilitand in German) be officially given the venia legendi, Latin for "permission for lecturing," or the ius docendi, "right of teaching" a specific academic subject at universities for a lifetime. This status is called Privatdozent (for males) or Privatdozentin (for females), abbreviated PD or Priv.-Doz..

Process[link]

In order to hold the rank of professor within the German system, in some scientific branches it is still necessary to have attained the habilitation. It is thus a qualification at a higher level than the degree of Promotion (the German equivalent of the Ph.D.). It is usually earned after several years of independent research, either "internally" while working at a university in a position as a Wissenschaftlicher Assistent ("academic assistant," a position equivalent to assistant professor when filled by a PhD-holder) or Akademischer Rat (academic councilor) or "externally" as a practitioner such as high school teacher, lawyer, etc. With the habilitation, the status of Privatdozent (university lecturer, PD or Priv.-Doz. for short) is usually granted.

Although disciplines and countries vary in the typical number of years for obtaining habilitation after getting a doctorate, it usually takes longer than for the Anglo-American tenure. For example, in Poland, the statutory time for getting a habilitation (traditionally, although not obligatorily, relying on a book publication) is nine years. Theoretically, if an assistant professor does not succeed in obtaining habilitation in this time, s/he should be moved to a position of a lecturer, with a much higher teaching load and no research obligations. In practice, however, on many occasions schools extend the deadlines for habilitation for most scholars if they do not make it in time.

A habilitation thesis can be either cumulative (based on previous research, be it articles or monographs) or monographical, i.e. a specific, unpublished thesis, which then has the tendency to be very long. While cumulative habilitations are predominant in some fields (such as medicine), they have been, since about a century ago, almost unheard of in others (such as in law). The cumulative form of the habilitation can be fairly compared to the higher doctorates, such as the D.Sc. (Doctor of Science), Litt.D. (Doctor of Letters), LLD (Doctor of Laws) and D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) found in the UK, some Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland, which are awarded on the basis of a career of published work. However, the higher doctorates are not recognized by German States as being equivalent to the habilitation.^[4]

Only those candidates receiving the highest or second-highest grade for their Ph.D. thesis are encouraged to proceed to the habilitation. Since 2006, in some federal states of Germany, there have been new restrictions by the federal laws regarding the degree of the Ph.D. thesis which allow only excellent candidates to enter the habilitation process.

The habilitation is awarded after a public lecture, to be held after the thesis has been accepted, and after which the venia legendi is bestowed. In some areas, such as law, philosophy, theology and sociology, the venia, and thus the habilitation, is only given for certain sub-fields (such as criminal law, civil law, or philosophy of science, practical philosophy etc.); in others, for the entire field.

Those who have achieved habilitation can denote the fact by placing the abbreviation "Dr hab." or "Dr habil." before their names, though this is only common for those who have not yet obtained or who have already relinquished a privatdozent position.

It is possible to get a professorship without habilitation, if the search committee attests the candidate to have qualifications equaling those of a habilitation and the higher ranking bodies (the university's senate and the country's ministry of education) approve of that. However, while some subjects make liberal use of this (e.g. the natural sciences in order to employ candidates from countries with different systems and the arts to employ active artists), in other subjects it is rarely done.

German debate about the habilitation[link]

In 2004, the habilitation was the subject of a major political debate in Germany. The former Federal Minister for Education and Science, Edelgard Bulmahn, aimed to abolish the system of the habilitation and replace it by the alternative concept of the junior professor: a researcher should first be employed for up to six years as a "junior professor" (a non-tenured position roughly equivalent to assistant professor in the United States or lecturer in the United Kingdom) and so prove his or her suitability for holding a tenured professorship.

Opinion split among German academia[link]

Many, especially researchers in the natural sciences, as well as young researchers, have long demanded the abandonment of the habilitation as they think it to be an unnecessary and time-consuming obstacle in a scientific career, contributing to the brain drain of talented young researchers who think their chances of getting a professorship at a reasonable age to be better abroad and hence move, for example, to the UK or USA. Many feel overly dependent on their supervising Principal Investigators (the professor heading the research group) as superiors have the power to delay the process of completing the habilitation. A further problem comes with funding support for those who wish to pursue an habilitation where older candidates often feel discriminated against, for example under the DFG's Emmy-Noether programme. Furthermore internal "soft" money might be only budgeted to pay for younger postdoctoral scientists. Because of the need to chase short-term research contracts, many researchers in the natural sciences apply for more transparent career development opportunities in other countries (e.g. in the UK, which provides more funding for senior postdoctoral positions, more lectureships, many more third-party fellowship funding opportunities including the 5-year RCUK fellowship and Value in People awards, no academic culture of age discrimination, and also the postgraduate (postdoctorate) diplomas in Higher Education and Learning & Research /Academic Development). In summary, a peer-reviewed demonstration of a successful academic development and international out-look is considered more than compensation for an habilitation where there is evidence of grant applications, well-cited publications, a network of collaborators, lecturing and organisational experience, and experience of having worked and published abroad.

On the other hand, amongst many senior researchers, especially in medicine, the humanities and the social sciences, the habilitation was and still is regarded as a valuable instrument of quality control Venia legendi before giving somebody a tenured position for life.

Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia, three states with conservative governments, filed suit at the German Constitutional Court against the new law replacing the habilitation with the junior professor [1]. The Court concurred with their argument that the Bundestag (the federal parliament) cannot pass such a law, because the German constitution explicitly states that affairs of education are the sole responsibility of the states and declared in July 2004 the law to be invalid. In reaction, a new federal law was passed, giving the states more freedom regarding habilitations and junior professors. The junior professor has since been legally established in all states, but it is still possible—and encouraged for an academic career in many subjects in Germany — to pursue a habilitation.

Similarities in other countries[link]

Universities in Sweden and Finland can appoint a researcher with a doctoral degree to an unpaid academic position called Docent ("Dosentti" in Finnish) after an independent scientific and educational review. A docent is allowed to lecture at a university ("venia legendi") and to supervise Ph.D. students at that university. There is no separate notion of habilitation in Finland and Sweden. The status of docent, or an equivalent scientific qualification, is also required to serve on doctoral committees and to serve as an opponent at a dissertation defense. After becoming a docent and continuing to amass qualifications, a Swedish scholar can also apply for a titular professorship.

In Denmark and Norway, the traditional doctoral degrees (that were the same in both countries) including Dr. Phil(os). are viewed as roughly equivalent to and sometimes translated as Habilitation (other translations include "higher doctorate", "grand doctorate" or "classic doctorate").^[5]

The degree of Docteur d'État formerly awarded by universities in France had a somewhat similar purpose. It is now replaced by the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches. The award of the French Habilitation is a strict requirement for supervising PhD students and applying for Professeur position. Depending on the field, it requires consistent research from 3 to 10 years after appointment, and (in the sciences) typically around 15-20 publications in peer reviewed journals. Contributions in administration, course organisation can compensate for a less substantial research dossier in some rare cases as the evaluation is primarily done by external and often foreign referees.

Belgium had a similar degree until 1995: it was called "Aggregatie voor het Hoger Onderwijs" (roughly: Higher Education Faculty Qualification) in Dutch and "Agrégation pour l'Enseignement Supérieur" in French.

In the Netherlands, the University of Utrecht has introduced the "Senior Kwalificatie Onderwijs ( SKO)" which has in 2010 officially become the nation-wide standard for the postdoctoral lecture qualification which builds the basis for a full Professor's position.

Although these awards are at a higher level than the Ph.D., they can only roughly be equated to the higher doctorates awarded by universities in the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth. They are not actually degrees, but more similar to a post-doctoral position that must yield a specific product.

References[link]

1. ^ See laws and regulations of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/imperia/md/content/chemie/ordnungenplaene/habil/habilordnung.pdf
2. ^ A short description of PhD and Habilitation at the Free University of Berlin,Germany: http://www.mi.fu-berlin.de/en/stud/prom-habil/index.html
3. ^ See laws and regulations in the site of the Spanish National Agency for Habilitation: http://www.aneca.es/actividadesevaluacion/evaluacionprofesorado/acreditacion_nacional.aspx
4. ^ "Anabin database". Anabin database (in German, click on "Abschlusstypen", then "Doctor of/in"). 24 July 2009. http://www.anabin.de/scripts/SelectLand.asp?SuchLand=3. Retrieved 12 August 2009. 
5. ^ Dommasnes, Liv Helga; Else Johansen Kleppe, Gro Mandt and Jenny-Rita Næss (1998). "Women archeologists in retrospect – the Norwegian case". In Margarita Díaz-Andreu García and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen. Excavating women: a history of women in European archaeology. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15760-9. "[...] a Dr. philos. degree, which is the highest academic degree in Norway, roughly equivalent to the German Doktor Habilitation. Traditionally, this degree, which was considered a prerequisite for obtaining top positions within academia, was earned rather late in life, often after one had passed 50 years of age." 

• A short description of PhD and Habilitation at the Free University of Berlin,Germany
• Education in Austria at the European Education Directory
• Germany tries to break its Habilitation Habit article in the science magazin of the AAAS
• Habilitation procedure at the Technical University of Munich,Germany
• Higher Education in Hungary at the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Interview with a Swedish professor on habilitation

See also[link]

• Agrégation
• Postdoctoral research

Bernhard Riemann
Bernhard Riemann, 1863
Born	September 17, 1826 Breselenz, Kingdom of Hanover (modern-day Germany)
Died	July 20, 1866(1866-07-20) (aged 39) Selasca, Kingdom of Italy
Residence	Kingdom of Hanover
Nationality	German
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Georg-August University of Göttingen
Alma mater	Georg-August University of Göttingen Berlin University
Doctoral advisor	Carl Friedrich Gauss
Other academic advisors	Gotthold Eisenstein Moritz Abraham Stern
Notable students	Gustav Roch
Known for	See list
Influences	Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann [ˈʁiːman] ( listen) (September 17, 1826 – July 20, 1866) was an influential German mathematician who made lasting contributions to analysis, number theory and differential geometry, some of them enabling the later development of general relativity.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Riemann was born in Breselenz, a village near Dannenberg in the Kingdom of Hanover in what is the Federal Republic of Germany today. His father, Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, was a poor Lutheran pastor in Breselenz who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. His mother, Charlotte Ebell, died before her children had reached adulthood. Riemann was the second of six children, shy, and suffered from numerous nervous breakdowns. Riemann exhibited exceptional mathematical skills, such as fantastic calculation abilities, from an early age but suffered from timidity and a fear of speaking in public.

Education[link]

During 1840, Riemann went to Hanover to live with his grandmother and attend lyceum (middle school). After the death of his grandmother in 1842, he attended high school at the Johanneum Lüneburg. In high school, Riemann studied the Bible intensively, but he was often distracted by mathematics. His teachers were amazed by his adept ability to solve complicated mathematical operations, in which he often outstripped his instructor's knowledge. In 1846, at the age of 19, he started studying philology and theology in order to become a priest and help with his family's finances.

During the spring of 1846, his father, after gathering enough money, sent Riemann to university at the renowned University of Göttingen, where he planned to study towards a degree in Theology. However, once there, he began studying mathematics under Carl Friedrich Gauss (specifically his lectures on the method of least squares). Gauss recommended that Riemann give up his theological work and enter the mathematical field; after getting his parents' approval, Riemann transferred to the University of Berlin in 1847.^[1] During his time of study, Jacobi, Dirichlet, Steiner, and Eisenstein were teaching. He stayed in Berlin for two years and returned to Göttingen in 1849.

Academia[link]

Riemann held his first lectures in 1854, which founded the field of Riemannian geometry and thereby set the stage for Einstein's general theory of relativity. In 1857, there was an attempt to promote Riemann to extraordinary professor status at the University of Göttingen. Although this attempt failed, it did result in Riemann finally being granted a regular salary. In 1859, following Dirichlet's death, he was promoted to head the mathematics department at Göttingen. He was also the first to suggest using dimensions higher than merely three or four in order to describe physical reality^[2]—an idea that was ultimately vindicated with Einstein's contribution in the early 20th century. In 1862 he married Elise Koch and had a daughter.

Austro-Prussian War[link]

Riemann fled Göttingen when the armies of Hanover and Prussia clashed there in 1866.^[3] He died of tuberculosis during his third journey to Italy in Selasca (now a hamlet of Verbania on Lake Maggiore) where he was buried in the cemetery in Biganzolo (Verbania). Meanwhile, in Göttingen his housekeeper tidied up some of the mess in his office, including much unpublished work. Riemann refused to publish incomplete work and some deep insights may have been lost forever.^[3]

Influence[link]

Riemann's published works opened up research areas combining analysis with geometry. These would subsequently become major parts of the theories of Riemannian geometry, algebraic geometry, and complex manifold theory. The theory of Riemann surfaces was elaborated by Felix Klein and particularly Adolf Hurwitz. This area of mathematics is part of the foundation of topology, and is still being applied in novel ways to mathematical physics.

Riemann made major contributions to real analysis. He defined the Riemann integral by means of Riemann sums, developed a theory of trigonometric series that are not Fourier series—a first step in generalized function theory—and studied the Riemann–Liouville differintegral.

He made some famous contributions to modern analytic number theory. In a single short paper (the only one he published on the subject of number theory), he introduced the Riemann zeta function and established its importance for understanding the distribution of prime numbers. He made a series of conjectures about properties of the zeta function, one of which is the well-known Riemann hypothesis.

He applied the Dirichlet principle from variational calculus to great effect; this was later seen to be a powerful heuristic rather than a rigorous method. Its justification took at least a generation. His work on monodromy and the hypergeometric function in the complex domain made a great impression, and established a basic way of working with functions by consideration only of their singularities.

Riemann was the inspiration for mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll) to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.^[4]

Euclidean geometry versus Riemannian geometry[link]

In 1853 Gauss asked his student Riemann to prepare a Habilitationsschrift on the foundations of geometry. Over many months, Riemann developed his theory of higher dimensions and delivered his lecture at Göttingen in 1854 entitled Über die Hypothesen welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen ("On the hypotheses which underlie geometry"). When it was finally published in 1868, two years after his death, the mathematical public received it with enthusiasm and it is now recognized as one of the most important works in geometry.

The subject founded by this work is Riemannian geometry. Riemann found the correct way to extend into n dimensions the differential geometry of surfaces, which Gauss himself proved in his theorema egregium. The fundamental object is called the Riemann curvature tensor. For the surface case, this can be reduced to a number (scalar), positive, negative or zero; the non-zero and constant cases being models of the known non-Euclidean geometries.

Higher dimensions[link]

Riemann's idea was to introduce a collection of numbers at every point in space (i.e., a tensor) which would describe how much it was bent or curved. Riemann found that in four spatial dimensions, one needs a collection of ten numbers at each point to describe the properties of a manifold, no matter how distorted it is. This is the famous construction central to his geometry, known now as a Riemannian metric.

Writings in English[link]

• 1868 “On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry” translated by W.K.Clifford, Nature 8 1873 183- reprinted in Clifford's Collected Mathematical Papers, London 1882 (MacMillan); New York 1968 (Chelsea).
• 1868.“On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry” in Ewald, William B., ed., 1996. “From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics”, 2 vols. Oxford Uni. Press: 652–61.
• Riemann, Bernhard (2004), Collected papers, Kendrick Press, Heber City, UT, ISBN 978-0-9740427-2-5, MR 2121437 

See also[link]

• List of topics named after Bernhard Riemann
• Riemann's 1859 paper introducing the complex zeta function

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Derbyshire, John (2003), Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics, Washington, DC: John Henry Press, ISBN 0-309-08549-7 .
• Monastyrsky, Michael (1999), Riemann, Topology and Physics, Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, ISBN 0-8176-3789-3 .

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bernhard Riemann

Wikisource has the text of the 1905 New International Encyclopedia article Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard.

• Bernhard Riemann at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• The Mathematical Papers of Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
• All publications of Riemann can be found at: http://www.emis.de/classics/Riemann/
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Bernhard Riemann", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Riemann.html .
• Bernhard Riemann – one of the most important mathematicians
• Bernhard Riemann's inaugural lecture
• Weisstein, Eric W., Riemann, Bernhard (1826–1866) from ScienceWorld.
• Bernhard Riemann at Find a Grave