Honorary Professor: Reinhard Zimmermann

Reinhard Zimmermann has been made an Honorary Professor in the College of Humanities & Social Science.

Professor Zimmermann is a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private Law in Hamburg, Chairman of Germany’s Association of Professors of Private Law, and President of the German National Academic Foundation.

He gained his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Hamburg, and was admitted to the bar in Hamburg in 1979.

In 1981 he was appointed Chair of Roman and Comparative Law at the University of Cape Town, before returning to Germany in 1988 to become Professor of Private Law, Roman Law and Comparative Legal History at the University of Regensburg.

Professor Zimmermann received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 1996.

He served as Chairman of the Humanities Division of the Max Planck Society 2006-2010, and in 2008 he joined the Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, as Professor of Legal History.

Professor Zimmermann is a member of numerous academies in Germany and elsewhere, and has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Auckland, Berkeley, Cambridge, Chicago, Cornell, Edinburgh, Oxford, Stellenbosch, Tulane and Yale.