Prof. Dr. Volker Metag (Photo: Justus Liebig University Gießen) can be regarded as one of the fathers of FAIR and of the future antiproton facility as part of FAIR which we know now as HESR and PANDA for the storage ring and the experiment respectively.
As the former Research Director of GSI, he started already in the middle of the 1990s to shape the eventual future of GSI after SIS18 went in operation. He initiated a couple of working groups, where one of them was dealing with hadron physics, a completely new field at GSI. The first milestone was a “Letter of Intent for a Glue/Charm Factory” in 1999, followed by a “Conceptional Design Report” for the whole facility which was the basis for an evaluation in 2001 and finally the decision in 2003 by the German Science Council (Deutscher Wissenschaftsrat) to realize the project which later got the name FAIR.
In recognition of his engagement and achievements, the PANDA collaboration awarded to him the "PANDA Honorary Lifetime Membership" for his "Outstanding Service to the PANDA Collaboration and the Field of Hadron Physics".
The certificate and the medal were presented by the PANDA Spokesperson on May 28, 2018 at the Festive Colloquium for his 75th Birthday being held at that day at the Justus Liebig University Gießen. The colloquium was presented by Ulrike Thoma (University Bonn) and the laudatory speech was given by Wolfgang Kühn (University Gießen). Both have been working with Volker Metag for a long time in a variety of projects.