Bert Weckhuysen from the University of Utrecht becomes Karl Ziegler Guest Professor 2019: Chemistry Professor receives award for his research in green chemistry

October 01, 2019

This year's highest award from the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung goes to Bert M. Weckhuysen from the University of Utrecht. The Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis will become Karl Ziegler Guest Professor in 2019 and will visit the Mülheim Institute from 28 to 30 October to give three lectures, receive his award and be available to the scientists for exchange. Bert Weckhuysen will be honored for his outstanding achievements in the field of operando characterization of catalysts. The Belgian investigates heterogeneous catalysts "in action" using various spectroscopic methods in order to gain new insights into their mode of action, function and deactivation in chemical processes. Weckhuysen is particularly interested in green chemistry and investigates, for example, conversion processes of cellulose from biomass into biofuels from renewable raw materials such as corn, grain, wood or biowaste.

Bert Weckhuysen has received numerous awards for his innovative and sustainable research, including the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC-Grant) in 2012 and the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, in 2013.

The public lecture with award ceremony will take place on Monday, 28 October 2019 at 4 p.m. in the Grand Lecture Hall of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, entrance Lembkestraße 7. Guests are very welcome to attend the lecture "Catalysts Live and Up Close: Hunting for the Hidden Chemistry in Catalysis".

About the Karl-Ziegler Guest Professorship

The Karl Ziegler Guest Professorship, endowed with 5000 euros, is named after the chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate Karl Ziegler, who headed the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung from 1943 to 1969. Ziegler discovered a new class of catalysts for the polymerization of ethylene, which was of outstanding importance for the industrial production of plastics and earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963.

The Karl Ziegler Guest Professorship was established by his wife and daughter after Ziegler's death. Since 1978 it has been intended to preserve the memory of the exceptional Mülheim scientist and to provide funds for scientists from all over the world to give guest lectures at Ziegler's place of work. To date, 30 outstanding scientists have visited Mülheim as Karl Ziegler guest professors, exchanged ideas with the institute's employees and researchers and held a public lecture.

 

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