Alfonso el Sabio y el mundo académico de su tiempo

This article contains the speech read on January 29th, 2016, i.e. St. Thomas Aquinas day, on the occasion of the investiture ceremony as doctor honoris causa by the University Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid) of Hans-J. Niederehe. Prof. Niederehe outlines some of the aspects of the life and work of Alfonso X the Wise and extracts conclusions that should not be forgotten today: the importance of teamwork, the need to build bridges between knowledge cultivated in different languages of culture, and, above all, the need of cultivating our own language, Spanish, in science.