Manfred Rätzsch

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Manfred Rätzsch (born June 30, 1933 in Leipzig ) is a German chemist ( polymer chemistry ).

Rätzsch studied chemistry from 1952 at the universities of Greifswald and Leipzig, graduating with Gerhard Geiseler in 1958. The thesis was about precision calorimetry and was made when he was a works graduate student at the Leunawerk Walter Ulbricht (assistant to the works manager Wolfgang Schirmer ), where he also built a pilot plant for methane chlorination. He then worked as a chemist in the VEB Leunawerken and first built an industrial plant for methane chlorination in the Bitterfeld works and then he was involved in plants for the polymerisation of ethylene under high pressure. In 1962 he became the manager of a high-pressure polyethylene plant in the Leunawerke with an annual production of 3000 tons. It was supplied by Imhausen-Chemie (Imhico), which received the know-how for Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) from Leuna. In 1965 he received his doctorate at Geiseler in Leipzig ( thermodynamics and reaction engineering of ethylene polymerization). In 1966 he became head of the high polymers research department at Leunawerke. In 1967 he completed his habilitation in Leipzig (The radical initiated polymerization of ethylene under high pressure). From 1969, in cooperation with the Soviet Union, high-pressure polyethylene plants (Polymir) were built in Belarus (Polymir 50 in Novopolotsk ) and Leuna (Polymir 60). From 1978 to 1980 he was the deputy (and most of the time also acting) head of research at the Leunawerke. The production of ethylene-norbornene copolymers proved to be a failure due to management errors.

In addition to his work at Leuna, he taught at the University of Leipzig from 1964 and as an honorary professor for high polymers at the TH Leuna-Merseburg from 1969 . In 1981 he became director of the Institute for Technology of Fibers of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Dresden (from 1984 Institute for Technology of Polymers, ITP), which he remained until 1990. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was research manager at Polymer Chemie Danubia (PCD) in Linz from 1991 to 1998 and then at Agrominz Melamine International (AMI). There he developed super soft polyolefins and foamed polypropylene . After the takeover by Borealis, he was chief scientist at Borealis in 1998/99 and then a consultant.

He has more than 230 publications and was involved in 180 patents.

In 1981 he received the August Kekulé Medal and was an Honored Technician of the People. In 1970 he and others received the National Prize for Science and Technology 1st class and in 1988 2nd class. In 1988 he received the Hermann F. Mark Medal in Austria and in 2002 the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st Class. From 1973 he was a corresponding and from 1977 full member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (and from 1988 to 1990 chairman of its chemistry class) and he is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 2008 he became an honorary member of the Academy for Central German Plastic Innovations (AMK).

From 1975 to 1980 he was chairman of the GDR Chemical Society . Rätzsch was a member of the SED .

Fonts

  • with Manfred Arnold: High polymers and their production, Leipzig: Fachbuchverlag 1973
  • Co-author of the textbook of technical chemistry , VEB Verlag für Grundstoffindindustrie, Leipzig 1974
  • with Burkart Philipp : New Results in Polymer Research, 1983

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Rätzsch, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig