Editorial – STEM education is key

It’s now two months since I accepted the Presidency of the German Physical Society, the DPG: a great honour for any German physicist, but also a great responsibility. With over 60,000 members, the DPG is the largest society devoted to physics in the world. It binds itself and its members to advocate for freedom, tolerance, truth and dignity in science, and to be conscious of the fact that those of us working in science have a particularly important role in society, being to a large extent responsible for the development of society. To me, that means that organisations like the DPG, and indeed the European Physical Society, need to look very closely at education as the basis to both the progress of science and of society.