Gerhard Wegner (chemist)

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Gerhard Wegner (* 1940 in Berlin ) is a German chemist .

life and work

Wegner studied chemistry in Mainz , where he received his doctorate in 1965. After a two-year postdoctoral stay at Yale University in New Haven and the return to Germany, the habilitation in physical chemistry followed in Mainz in 1970. After further appointments to the Universities of Marburg and Hanover , he accepted a professorship for macromolecular chemistry at the University of Freiburg in 1974 . Wegner joined the Max Planck Society as a scientific member in 1983 , was, alongside Erhard W. Fischer, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, where he was director of a scientific department until his retirement in 2008. From 1996 to 2002 Wegner was Vice President of the Max Planck Society.

Wegner developed significantly modern concepts in the science of organic materials such as self-organization , supramolecular chemistry , nanostructures and control of properties through molecular architecture. His research interests include chain stiffness as a structural principle in the construction of novel macromolecular materials, solid polyelectrolytes and ionic conductors, polymers as semiconductors and optical materials, synthesis and evaluation of polymeric surfactants, polymer-controlled mineralization processes and characterization of polymer structures using quantitative methods (X-ray scattering, electron microscopy, Light scattering).

Wegner has received numerous honors and awards, among other things, he was awarded the Otto Bayer Award (1984), the Philip Morris Research Award (1989), the Hermann Staudinger Prize (1990), the Polymer Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society , the DECHEMA Medal , an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell (2000) and the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class (2004) for outstanding services to science.

He is also a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz (since 1996, 2005 to 2011 Vice President of the Mathematical and Natural Science Class), the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea (since 1991) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

On November 19, 2011, Gerhard Wegner was awarded an honorary doctorate (Dr. sc. Eh) by the ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. With this award, the ETH honored the fundamental contributions to the chemistry and physics of polymers and also to the description of the behavior of »soft matter«.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b http://www.adwmainz.de/verbindungen/profil/prof-dr-rer-nat-dr-hc-gerhard-wegner.html , member entry by Gerhard Wegner at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz on May 20, 2020
  2. ↑ a b https://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de/133836/Wegner , Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, homepage of Gerhard Wegner, accessed on May 23, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Wegner, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin