Press release: Leibniz Prize for Göttingen Chemist

Nr. 269/2016 - 08.12.2016

Professor Lutz Ackermann receives distinguished German research prize

(pug) Prof. Dr. Lutz Ackermann, chemist at the University of Göttingen, has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The prize from the DFG is a tribute to his outstanding achievements in the field of organic chemistry, particularly in the development of new and resource-saving manufacturing methods for important chemical products such as active ingredients, agrochemicals and fine chemicals. The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize is endowed with € 2.5 million and considered one of the most important research funding grants in Germany. The awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on March 15, 2017.

"We congratulate Lutz Ackermann on this distinguished achievement and are very pleased about the award," declares University President Professor Ulrike Beisiegel. "The Leibniz Prize is a testament to his continuously excellent work at the Faculty of Chemistry in the past years."

“The Faculty of Chemistry is very pleased that its meritorious member Lutz Ackermann will be receiving this prestigious award," affirms Professor Philipp Vana, Dean of the Faculty. "We are proud to have the pleasure of working with such an outstanding scientist and pleasant-natured colleague."

Lutz Ackermann, born in 1972, studied chemistry at the University of Kiel. He then worked at the German Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim, a carbon research institution, and at the University of Dortmund, where he completed his PhD in 2001. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley in the USA. From 2003 to 2007, he led an Emmy Noether junior research group at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. Guest professorships brought him to Italy, the United States and Japan. In 2007, he followed the appointment as chair in Organic Catalysis at Göttingen University. From 2011 to 2013, he was Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, and from 2013 to 2015 Research Dean. He has been Director of the Institute for Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry since 2015.

In his research, Professor Ackermann focuses on the topics of organic synthesis and catalytic chemistry. Catalysts are molecules that accelerate or control chemical reactions without being consumed themselves. Professor Ackermann has made significant progress in this field using new methods for the activation of carbon-hydrogen bonds. In the ranking of the "Highly Cited Researchers 2016”, he was once again one of the world's most cited scientists in his field.

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