Prof. Dr Lothar Siekmann has been awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the Federal President, Dr Frank-Walter Steinmeier. It is the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for special achievements in political, economic, cultural, intellectual or honorary fields. Dr Ursula Sautter, Mayor of the city of Bonn, bestowed the award during a Ceremony in the historic Old Town Hall on 17 June 2022.

Prof. Siekmann was a founding member of the Joint Committee for Traceability in Laboratory Medicine (JCTLM) and a distinguished scientist in the field of quality assurance and metrology for clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine. As a member of the medical faculty of the University of Bonn for clinical and chemical analysis until his retirement in 2007, he undertook ground-breaking work in improving the quality of measurements in clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine. This included pioneering work in the introduction of isotope dilution mass spectrometry as the basis of reference methods for clinical analytes, enabling equivalence of measurement results for in vitro diagnostic test kits to be established through metrological traceability.

Prof. Siekmann served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), represented the International Federation for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) at the Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance: Metrology in Chemistry and Biology (CCQM), and was a founding member of the IFCC Committee on Traceability of Measurements in Laboratory Medicine (C-TLM) and the Joint Committee for Traceability in Laboratory Medicine (JCTLM).

He has received two other awards for his special achievements: the Gábor Szász Prize from the German Society for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (DGKL) in 1991; and the international Robert Schaffer Prize from the IFCC and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2008.

The BIPM adds its congratulations to Prof. Dr Siekmann in recognition of his achievements and contributions to the development of metrology in laboratory medicine and its impact on ensuring the quality and equivalence of in vitro diagnostic testing world-wide.