On June 18, the Assembly of Academicians elected Prof. Peter Schreiner, a Byzantinist from Germany, and Prof. Andreas Börner, a geneticist from Germany, as foreign members of BAS. The Assembly of Academicians also elected Prof. Ivan Petrov, from the United States, as an associate member of the Assembly of Academicians and Corresponding Members.
Prof. Peter Schreiner was born on May 4, 1940, in Munich, Germany. Prof. Schreiner studied classical philology, history, medieval Latin philology, Slavic studies, Middle Eastern history and culture (Ottoman studies), and Byzantine studies at Ludwig Maximilian University (with a break spent in Montpellier, France). He received his doctorate in Byzantine studies in February 1967. From 1972 to 1974, he was a research fellow at the Free University of Berlin. In 1974, he completed his habilitation in Byzantine Studies at the Free University of Berlin (The Byzantine Short Chronicles: Edition and Commentary). From 1974 to 1979, he was a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. From 1979 to 2005, he was a full professor of Byzantine studies at the University of Cologne and director of the Institute for Classical Studies.
Prof. Schreiner is the author of a voluminous and significant body of scholarly work, notable for its factual contributions, devoted to the history of Byzantium and the Balkan peoples during the 4th–15th centuries. Among his many fundamental works, the three-volume edition of the Byzantine short chronicles which contain a wealth of information about Bulgaria’s medieval past holds a special place. His many years of work on the Byzantine manuscripts from the Vatican Apostolic Library led to the decipherment and interpretation of numerous texts on late Byzantine economic history, some of which also pertain to Bulgarian history. He published these in a separate, voluminous volume.
Prof. Schreiner’s research on the history of the Bulgarian Middle Ages is compiled in two volumes: one, titled “Studia Byzantinobulgarica,” was published in Vienna in 1986, and the other: “Diversity and Rivalry: Selected Studies on Society and Culture in Byzantium and Medieval Bulgaria” was published in 2005 in Sofia. Prof. Schreiner is an honorary professor of Byzantine studies at the University of Cologne and at the Institute for Classical Studies at the same university; an honorary doctorate recipient from the universities of Tarnovo, Belgrade, Sofia, Galați, and Komotini; and a member of the Academies of Sciences in Vienna, Göttingen, and Venice. Prof. Schreiner has held the highest positions, including president of the International Association of Byzantine Studies and editor-in-chief of one of the most authoritative Byzantine studies journals, “Byzantinische Zeitschrift”. He has authored some 800 publications, about 60 of which focus on Bulgarian cultural history dating back to the time of Saints Cyril and Methodius.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Börner was born on April 9, 1959, in Grimma, Germany. Prof. Börner is a renowned European scientist with a long-standing contribution to the field of plant genetics and breeding. He received his PhD in this field in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 1995 at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle.
Prof. Börner’s research interests include: cereal crops genetics; genetic analysis of quantitative traits; association mapping; plant genetic resources; and seed biology. His achievements in these areas place him among the leading European and global scientists.
His professional career has been closely linked to the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben where he successively headed research groups on wheat genetics (1990–1997) and on the genetics and reproduction of plant resources (since 1997), and has also directed the IPK Gene Bank Management and Evaluation Program – one of the world’s leading centers for the conservation of plant biodiversity (since 2005) . Since 2020, he has been a professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
Prof. Börner has held key international positions, including president of the European Association for Research on Plant Breeding (EUCARPIA) (since 2016), long-time chief coordinator of the European Cereals Genetics Co-operative (formerly known as the European Wheat Aneuploid Co-operative) – EWAC (1994–2025), and editor-in-chief of the “Cereal Research Communications” (Springer Nature) journal.
Prof. Börner was awarded the Medal for Scientific Cooperation (2014) and the honorary title of “Doctor honoris causa” (2019) by the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland. He is an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (since 2023) and a foreign associate of the Indian National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (since 2025).
Prof. Ivan Petrov was born on September 6, 1949, in Shumen. In 1974, he graduated from the Faculty of Physics at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” specializing in atomic physics. In 1976, he was appointed as a physicist, and in 1978, as a research associate in the “Physical Problems of Ion Technologies” department at the Institute of Electronics – BAS. In 1986, he earned his PhD, and in 1992, he was promoted to “Senior Research Associate, Level II.” Since 1989, Prof. Petrov has been a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA). From 1998 to 2010, he served as director of the Center for Materials Microanalysis, an applied research center affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy. During the same period, Prof. Petrov was also a professor at the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois (USA). From 2000 to 2012, he was an honorary visiting professor at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, and from 2021 to 2023, he was a visiting professor at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Since 2010, he has been a visiting professor at Linköping University in Sweden.
Prof. Ivan Petrov’s scientific contributions are in the fields of thin-film physics, surface modification, and methods for analyzing materials. The contributions of his work can be summarized as the development of new technologies, a significant expansion of knowledge regarding the formation and characterization of thin-film growth processes, and the development of technologies with proven practical applications. Prof. Petrov has made fundamental contributions to the development of low-temperature methods for synthesizing high-quality coatings of transition metal nitrides and borides via ion-assisted growth. He is the author of over 340 articles published in peer-reviewed and indexed journals, 3 book chapters, 9 patents granted in the United States, 140 plenary, keynote, and invited presentations, and short lecture courses. His h-index, according to Web of Science, is 70, and the total number of independent citations of his works exceeds 27,000. His invited review article in J. Vac. Sci. Technol. on the evolution of microstructure in thin-film growth has been cited over 1,500 times. He is a co-author of the first paper on high-power pulsed magnetron sputtering (HPPMS or HiPIMS) which has been cited more than 900 times.
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