Apr 5 2019
Professor Frank Würthner, Chair of Organic Chemistry II at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, will receive the Adolf von Baeyer Medal, a highly coveted prize.
Professor Frank Würthner (Image credit Ingo Peters/University of Würzburg)
“With your work, you have transferred dye chemistry to modern times,” stated the President of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) to Professor Würthner.
Professor Würthner was recognized by GDCh for his exceptional work in the domain of supramolecular polymers, especially based on dye aggregates and their use as organic molecular semiconductors.
The Adolf von Baeyer Medal will be presented to Professor Würthner at the GDCh Science FORUM, which will be held in Aachen in September 2019. In Europe, the GDCh is the largest chemical society that includes members from industry, education, academe, and other fields.
Adolf von Baeyer (1835–1917) is one of among the most prominent chemists of his time. He received the Nobel Prize in 1905 for the synthesis of the blue dye Indigo, which was extremely challenging to extract from plants in those days. For over a century, indigo has been the most significant dye for jeans; however, it can also be used for making solar cells.
From a scientific standpoint, Professor Würthner and the Nobel Prize winner von Baeyer have a lot in common—the dyes being developed by the former in his laboratory at JMU can also be used for solar technologies. They contain intricate, so-called supramolecular structures, which have the ability to absorb the sun’s energy and apply it to organic photovoltaics or artificial photosynthesis.
To date, Professor Siegfried Hünig, a JMU chemist, was the only to receive the Adolf von Baeyer Medal in 1967, also for his dye research.
Career of Frank Würthner
Born in 1964 in Villingen-Schwenningen, Frank Würthner studied chemistry at the University of Stuttgart. Once he completed his doctorate, he carried out research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (USA), at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Ulm, and at the BASF AG Color Laboratories in Ludwigshafen. He later shifted to the University of Würzburg in 2002.
Moreover, Professor Würthner was recognized with a number of awards for his work, the most recent being the ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council and endowed with 2.5 million euros. For a number of years, Professor Würthner has been among a set of German chemists whose publications are quoted most often by other scientists around the world. He is also a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
Professor Würthner’s research at JMU is performed at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and also at the Center for Nanosystems Chemistry, which is part of the Bavarian research program called “Solar Technologies Go Hybrid.”