Wolfgang A. Herrmann

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Wolfgang A. Herrmann (2007)

Wolfgang Anton Herrmann (born April 18, 1948 in Kelheim ) is a German chemist . He was president of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) from 1995 to 2019 and lives in Freising and Garching an der Alz .

Life

Growing up as the son of a teacher in the village of Ihrlerstein , Herrmann attended the Donau-Gymnasium Kelheim , where he graduated from high school in 1967. He then studied chemistry at the TH (from 1970: TU) Munich as a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk Episcopal Study Foundation , where he wrote his diploma thesis in 1971 under Ernst Otto Fischer . In 1973, with a thesis on optically active transition metal complexes with Henri Brunner at the University of Regensburg, he was awarded a Dr. rer. nat. PhD . After a research grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) with Philip Skell at the Pennsylvania State University (USA) from 1975 to 1976 , he completed his habilitation in 1978 at the University of Regensburg with an experimental thesis on "Organometallic syntheses with diazoalkanes" .

In 1979, he received a call to the University of Regensburg. In 1982 he moved to a chair at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. In 1985 he succeeded Ernst Otto Fischer on his chair at the Technical University of Munich and headed the Inorganic Chemical Institute. From 1988 to 1990 he was Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry.

Wolfgang A. Herrmann became President of the Technical University of Munich in 1995. He was re-elected president in 1999, 2005, 2007 and 2013.

Herrmann was re-elected four times by the University Council of the Technical University of Munich, each unanimously, most recently on February 20, 2013 (for a further six years). Since October 1, 2014, he has also been acting rector of the Munich School of Politics (HfP), whose sponsorship was transferred to the Technical University of Munich by the Bavarian State Parliament (HfP law on December 1, 2014).

Herrmann is married to the senior teacher Freya Herrmann and has five children. His son Florian Herrmann has been a directly elected member of the Bavarian State Parliament for the constituency of Freising since 2008 and head of the Bavarian State Chancellery and Bavarian State Minister for Federal and European Affairs and the Media since 2018.

He was a member of the supervisory board of Evonik Industries (Essen), is a member of the board of trustees of the Bertelsmann Stiftung (Gütersloh; since 2016) and was chairman of the supervisory board of the Bavarian Research Alliance (Munich). In 2008 he was appointed to the Governing Board of the "European Institute of Innovation and Technology" (EIT), a new establishment by the European Union.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (since 1995), acatech - National Academy of Technical Sciences , the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, the Board of Trustees of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and of the Senate of the Max Planck Society.

In August 2010, Herrmann positioned himself as one of 40 signatories of the Energy Political Appeal , a lobbying initiative of the major electricity companies RWE , Vattenfall and E.ON , in order to promote the extension of the service life of German nuclear power plants. At the same time, he advocates “green technologies”, which are long-term research focuses at the Technical University of Munich, e. B. Electromobility, energy-efficient building and planning.

Since June 14, 2015 Herrmann has also been an honorary member of the Catholic student association KDStV Vindelicia Munich in the Cartell Association . Herrmann has been chairman of the structural committee for the establishment of the new Technical University of Nuremberg since 2017 .

On September 30, 2019, Herrmann, the long-serving President of a German university, handed over his office to his successor Thomas F. Hofmann after 24 years as President of the Technical University of Munich .

criticism

Herrmann came under fire in 1998 when he took over the " honorary protection " (a kind of patronage) at the ball of the Vienna Corporations Ring . Herrmann was accused of indirectly supporting the fraternities represented in the WKR, including among others, the media and politicians as a right-wing -assessed Teutonia . Politicians from the SPD and the Greens called for his resignation. The journalist Josef Joffe saw in the allegations a politically motivated slander by the Green MP Christian Magerl . The responsible Bavarian ministry stood behind Herrmann.

At the beginning of 2001, shortly before his first re-election as TU President, Herrmann was the designated Bavarian State Minister for Health, Nutrition and Consumer Protection . Due to an ongoing investigation into tax evasion , he canceled shortly before the appointment. As a result of the investigation, Herrmann was fined 45,000 marks.

In 2015, Herrmann was criticized for his plan to change the teaching language to English for almost every master’s course at TU Munich. The club German language praised these plans with the negative price " Sprachpanscher of the year ".

Scientific works

Herrmann's specialist fields and work areas are organometallic chemistry and catalysis , industrial catalytic processes, as well as multiple metal-metal compounds and multiple compounds between transition metals and main group elements , organolanthanoid complexes, water-soluble catalysts, inorganic and organic materials, and metal effects in biological systems. For some time now, he has been one of the most internationally cited German chemists; h-Index 103, as of July 26, 2020 (Essential Science Indicators, ISI).

His work in the entire field of organometallic chemistry found international recognition , especially his research results on the preparative development of new classes of substances and the development of water-soluble organometallic catalysts for industrial use. His scientific work is recorded in more than 720 original publications and numerous review articles and book chapters. Under Herrmann's scientific guidance, around 150 dissertations have been written so far. Several of his students were appointed to chairs: Jun Okuda (RWTH Aachen), Roland A. Fischer (University of Bochum, successor at TU Munich since 2015), Werner Thiel (TU Kaiserslautern), Peter W. Roesky (KIT Karlsruhe), Alexander Filippou (Uni Bonn), Matthias Wagner (Uni Frankfurt / Main), Wolfgang Scherer (Uni Augsburg), Reiner Anwander (Uni Tübingen), Sven Schneider (Uni Göttingen), Paul Kiprof ( University of Minnesota / USA), Michael K. Denk ( University of Guelph , Ontario / Canada), Lukas J. Goossen ( TU Kaiserslautern ), Richard Fischer (Honorary Professor TUM), Frieder Jaekle (Rutgers University, Newark, NJ / USA), Herbert Riepl (TU Munich), Marc Taillefer ( Université Montpellier / France), Roger Alberto (University of Zurich).

He contributed to the publication of the three-volume monograph “Applied Homogeneous Catalysis with Organometallic Compounds” (Eds. Boy Cornils, Wolfgang A. Herrmann; 2nd edition VCH-Wiley 2002), which appeared for the first time in 1996, of the 5-volume standard work “Catalysis from A to Z "(5th edition, VCH-Wiley, 2019), as well as the 10-volume series" Synthetic Organometallic and Inorganic Chemistry "(Ed. Wolfgang A. Herrmann; Thieme-Verlag 1995-2001) with.

His honorary functions included chairing the administrative board of the Deutsches Museum in Munich from 1998 to May 2014 . From 2002 to 2004 he was chairman of the Bavarian Rectors' Conference and from 2004 to 2005 chairman of the University of Bavaria e. V., which he initiated as an association of Bavarian universities. Since 2006 he has been a member of the “Women in Science” advisory board of the Robert Bosch Foundation . He is chairman of the “Global Tech Universities Alliance”, the union of 11 top international technical universities.

honors and awards

He holds honorary doctorates from universities in:

He is also the holder of numerous national and international awards, including:

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang A. Herrmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Golden Ring of Honor for TUM President. May 29, 2020, accessed July 5, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Wolfgang A. Herrmann at academictree.org, accessed on February 10, 2018.
  3. ↑ Prof. Wolfgang A. Herrmann appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Bertelsmann Foundation. In: The Foundation. June 28, 2015, accessed May 18, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang A. Herrmann (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on May 24, 2016.
  5. ^ Wolfgang A. Herrmann Technical University of Munich. In: acatech. Retrieved June 28, 2020 (German).
  6. ↑ member entry of Wolfgang A. Hermann at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , accessed on 10.11.17
  7. ↑ kas.de: Board of Trustees as of March 2011; Retrieved September 4, 2011
  8. ^ Association organs. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .
  9. ↑ TUMCampus 2/2011 , p. 3
  10. ^ ACADEMIA, Cartell Association of Catholic German Student Associations, issue 5/2014 - 107th year
  11. ^ Minister of Science Dr. Ludwig Spaenle appoints a structural commission for the founding of a University of Nuremberg - “Founding of the University of Nuremberg, a unique opportunity in recent German university history” | Bavarian state portal. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Change of staff at the top of TUM. Retrieved September 30, 2019 .
  13. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: TU President honors national liberal fraternity. Retrieved April 21, 2009 (no longer available online).
  14. ↑ Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen : Munich TU President gave the 45th Ball of the National Liberal Corporations Vienna “protection of honor”. Archived from the original on August 25, 2010 ; Retrieved April 21, 2009 .
  15. ↑ Jungle World : A Right Atomic Boy. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008 ; Retrieved April 21, 2009 .
  16. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: "If you lack arguments", April 6, 1998
  17. ↑ Focus : Bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns - turbulence in Bavaria also shakes Edmund Stoiber. Retrieved February 9, 2013 .
  18. ↑ Der Spiegel: Munich Sandbox Games. Retrieved April 16, 2011 .
  19. ↑ President of the Technical University of Munich is the Sprachpanscher of the year 2015, accessed July 12, 2018
  20. ↑ Technical University of Munich : TUM President Herrmann now also an honorary doctorate from Tiflis State University. Retrieved November 6, 2009 .
  21. ↑ Honorary doctorate from Singapore. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .
  22. ↑ Honorary doctorate for Wolfgang A. Herrmann. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .
  23. ^ Agenda - Professor Unrast in Munich ( Memento from December 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). In Financial Times Deutschland on December 8, 2009, last accessed on January 17, 2010.
  24. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: President of the Technical University named “University Manager of the Year” ( Memento from October 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 115 kB)
  25. ↑ Press release of the Bavarian state government about the award, accessed December 8, 2012 ( Memento of December 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  26. ↑ PNP.de: Four people do something special. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
  27. ^ Passauer Neue Presse (PNP) - Burghauser Anzeiger, April 18, 2016.
  28. ↑ TUM Campus Straubing: Straubing will be a university town from October
  29. ^ Montgelas Prize for TUM President. Technical University of Munich, accessed June 25, 2018 .
  30. ↑ PNP.de: Because Raitenhaslach: Ring of Honor TU President Herrmann. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
  31. ↑ UniBAYERN. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
  32. ↑ Excellent: Professor Wolfgang Hermann and Gerd Sonnleitner. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
  33. ↑ TUM honors outstanding personalities , September 16, 2019, accessed on November 7, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Herrmann, Wolfgang A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herrmann, Wolfgang Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist, President of the Technical University of Munich
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Kelheim , Lower Bavaria