Professor Dr Josef Rutenfranz was the leader of the group of eight scientists who conceived PWP in a café in Berlin in 1967. He organised and chaired the first PWP Symposium in Dortmund in 1968 and remained the unofficial ‘Chairman of the Board’ until his untimely death, at the age of 60, on 28 February 1989. At PWP XV in Hungary later that year it was decided, in his honour, that each subsequent PWP Symposium should begin with the Josef Rutenfranz Lecture.  The following lists the lecturers and their presentations:

1991, Per-Olaf Astrand
Children and Adolescents: Performance Measurements, Education

1993, Dan M. Cooper
New Horizons in Paediatric Exercise Research

1995, Oded Bar-Or
Safe Exercise for the Child with a Chronic Disease

1997, Han C.G. Kemper
A Scientific Voyage through Research in Children’s Health – From Heart via Muscle to Bone

1999, Frank Galioto
The Challenges of the Future; Are We Ready?

2001, Anna Farkas
What about Girls?

2003, Gaston Beunen
Physical Growth, Maturation and Performance: Back to the Future

2005, Beat Villiger
News on Exercise-Induced Asthma
 
2007, Willem Van Mechelen
A Behavioural and Ecological Perspective to Energy-Balance-Related Behaviours in Children

2009, Emmanuel Van Praagh
The Child as a Source of  Mechanical Power
 
2010, Viswanath Unnithan
Preventative Efficacy of Team Sports: Cardiovascular and Cardio-Respiratory Insights for Health and Performance

2011, Neil Armstrong
From Playground to Podium