Günther Maier in Tenerife in February 2007. From his LiC autobiography, Fig. 7.8.

Some of Günther Maier’s highlights from 60 years. From his LiC autobiography.

🌻Rest in peace, Günther Maier. The chemist who made one “impossible molecule” after another died on April 10 at the age of 94. He was a modest man who trained a large number of PhD students. His achievements were recognized with the Adolf von Baeyer Memorial Medal of the GDCh. l-i-c.org/1125

Happy Easter from the LiC team! Our Easter Bunny has been busy painting Easter eggs this year.
Wishing you a joyful holiday and a colorful spring!

Award of honorary membership of the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry to Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus on 30 March 2026 at the Bunsen Conference in Dresden. From the left: Laudator Melanie Schnell (Kiel and Hamburg), Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus, Robert Franke (President) · photo by Eva E. Wille

🏆Congratulations to Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus, who was awarded honorary membership of the Deutsche #BunsenGesellschaft (bunsen.de) today. Fittingly, this comes on Bunsen’s birthday. She published her autobiography, “Burning for Science—A Woman in a Technical Field” (l-i-c.org/1137), only last year.

Armin de Meijere at his 80th birthday celebration · photo by Eva E. Wille

📅 Lutz Ackermann, Peter Gölitz, Dieter Kaufmann, and Oliver Reiser have organized an Armin de Meijere Memorial Symposium, “From Small Rings to Large Compounds”, which will take place on May 22, 2026, at the University of Göttingen. Registration required (see program l-i-c.org/news-events....).

Henning Hopf, Bernried 2015 · photo courtesy Eva E. Wille

🌻Henning Hopf passed away on March 12 only three months after his 85th birthday. A great organic chemist who had deeply cared about our community—a true “mensch”—has left us. Lives in Chemistry l-i-c.org lost a most insightful Advisory Board member who had enormously contributed to this endeavor.

Hans-Joachim Freund as laudator for the FCI Literature Prize at the Bunsen Meeting, June 2023 · photo courtesy Eva E. Wille

🎁HBT to Hans-Joachim Freund, who turns 75 today.
Hajo Freund is not only an exceptional scientist; he also served the community in many ways—for example, as a textbook author and journal editor. He has been a great mentor whose “academic footprint” is enormous.

Directory of Names

4,000+ Directory of Key Modern Chemists
🕮The complete directory of names for the first 15 autobiographies in the series “Lives in Chemistry” is now available for free use. This provides immediate and convenient access to 4,234 pages and 3,095 illustrations.
l-i-c.org/licdir.html

Carsten Reinhardt at the Freiburg LiC meeting, Oct. 2023 · photo by Mark Kantor, rca-separations.com

🎁HBT Carsten Reinhardt, who turns 60 today.
His oeuvre in the history of science is vast and wide-ranging, with a focus on the history of chemistry. He has served several times as chair of the GDCh’s History of Chemistry Division, and he has been chair of the LiC Advisory Board from the beginning.

D. H. R. Barton (left) and Ryoji Noyori in Seoul in 1984 · photo courtesy R. Noyori

W. Oppolzer and K. B. Sharpless at the Hoechst Conference at the Reisensburg Castle in 1983.

Throughout his live in chemistry, Ryoji Noyori met many illustrious #chemists from all over the world. Have a look at the richly illustrated—136 photos on 159 pages—“Long, Memorable #Journey with the #International Community” that supplements his autobiography.
Download: doi.org/10.47261/156...

Wolfgang Beck · courtesy of GNT/W. Beck

🌻Sad news: Wolfgang M. Beck, Professor Emeritus at LMU Munich, passed away on January 19. He was born on May 5, 1932, in Munich and stayed there almost all his long life.
A towering figure in the inorganic chemistry community and a most friendly “Mensch” is dearly missed.
www.gnt-verlag.de/1141

Ralf Ludwig at a lecture in November 2019 · photo by Peter Goelitz

🎁HBT Ralf Ludwig, who turns 65 today. He holds the Chair of General Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Rostock and heads the #VibrationalSpectroscopy in #Catalysis group at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT), also in Rostock.

www.linkedin.com/posts/livesi...

Mike Mąkosza at the Freiburg LiC meeting, Oct. 2023 · photo by Mark Kantor, rca-separations.com

🌻Rest in peace, Mieczysław (Mike) Mąkosza. This hero of organic chemistry passed away at the age of 91 on January 14.

www.linkedin.com/posts/livesi...

“Treppauf, Treppab” (“Upstairs, Downstairs”): the picture shows the stairways of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, decorated with the LiC books shining light while we all walk up and down, and up and down and up again during our lives … · photo by Eva E. Wille

Season’s Greetings! Wishing you good health and fresh energy for 2026—for all the ups and downs on your stairs.
Upstairs, downstairs—guided by LiC #autobiographies—may you create your own personal chemical path.
More to come before the end of 2026.
#AcademicPublishing #ScienceCommunication

Armin de Meijere portrait drawing 2018, by Jesús Alcarazo Velasco

Here is another portrait drawing of Armin de Meijere, created in 2018 by the Andalusian artist Jesús Alcarazo Velasco www.pintorjesusalcarazo.com

Armin de Meijere

🌻A great loss: Armin de Meijere passed away at age 86 on December 17 in Göttingen. His distinguished career spanned both the golden age of physical organic chemistry & the rise of transition-metal catalysis. 250 PhD students & postdocs have lost an exceptional mentor—and chemistry has lost a giant.

Henning Hopf at the presentation of the Primo Levi Award by GDCh President Stefanie Dehnen at the Chemiedozententagung in March 2024 in Aachen · photo by Eva E. Wille

🎁HBT Henning Hopf, who turns 85 today. He is an eminent hydrocarbon chemist who made major contributions to alkenes and alkines, allenes and cumulenes, as well as cyclophanes and dendralenes, and he wrote “Classics in Hydrocarbon Synthesis”, published 25 years ago by Wiley-VCH.
#OrganicChemistry

Fig. 0.2 from Stephen Kent’s autobiography, taken in July 2019 · courtesy of himself

Stephen Kent during his talk at the “25 Years of ChemBioChem and ChemPhysChem” symposium, Berlin, October 2025 · photo by Eva E. Wille

Stephen Kent presenting his autobiography at the end of his talk at the “25 Years of ChemBioChem and ChemPhysChem” symposium, Berlin, October 2025 · photo by Peter Goelitz

Stephen Kent (right), signing his autobiography for Mario Müller (Wiley) at the “25 Years of ChemBioChem and ChemPhysChem” symposium, Berlin, October 2025 · photo by Peter Goelitz

🎁HBT Stephen B. H. Kent, who turns 80 today. Distance running was his passion and he also went for long distances, or rather long sequences, when it came to the synthesis of peptides and proteins, a field that his group has revolutionized through the development of “chemical ligation” methods.

A puzzle advent calendar curated by the publisher together with an art gallery starting today, all about science and art—with a big dose of chemistry hidden inside!

Peter Schreiner, Nov. 1021 · photo by Ralf Hahn

🎁Happy 60th birthday, Peter Schreiner! With the spectacular synthesis of “impossible” #hexanitrogen (doi.org/10.1038/s415...) he basically gave himself the perfect present. #OrganicChemistry #MatrixIsolation #Organocatalysis #ComputationalChemistry

Paul Knochel · ©Société Chimique de France

🎁HBT Paul Knochel (LMU Munich), who turns 70 today—unbelievable knowing his charming boyish appeal. Developing new synthetic methods, in particular based on organometallic compounds, and applying them in the #TotalSynthesis of natural products has become a hallmark of the Knochel group.

Poster: Women in Chemistry—Empowering Passionate Scientists Colloquium, October 30, 2025 at Bielefeld University. Speakers: Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus, Carsten Reinhardt, Georgina Herrera, Eva E. Wille.

📅🧪Today on 30 October 2025, 4 p.m. @unibielefeld:
#WomenInChemistry—Empowering Passionate Scientists Colloquium
An event dedicated to honoring the achievements, challenges, and aspirations of women in chemistry, with l-i-c.org/1137 K. Kohse-Hoeinghaus
Event info: www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/...

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025
Susumu Kitagawa (Japan), Richard Robson (Australia) and Omar M. Yaghi (USA) have been awarded for the development of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)
Congratulations!!
www.chemistryviews.org/nobel-prize-...

🕮At the OMCOS XXII Conference in Kyoto #OMCOSXXII #OMCOS22, on Monday just two days before his 87th birthday today, #NobelLaureate Ryoji Noyori received a Certificate to honor him for writing his scientific autobiography l-i-c.org/1135 “Research Should be Fresh, Simple, and Clear”.

🎁Albert Eschenmoser would have turned 100 today. He passed away on July 14, 2023, after a long and successful journey through the wonderlands of organic chemistry—that he described in his characteristic style in the recently published autobiography l-i-c.org/1136

Jean-Marie Lehn at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2025 · photo by Peter Gölitz

Jean-Marie Lehn on a poster for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2025 · photo by Eva E. Wille

🏆On July 31, the birthday of Primo Levi, it was announced that Jean-Marie Lehn will receive the Primo Levi Award. Presented by the German Chemical Society GDCh, the Italian SCI, and the International Center for Primo Levi Studies in Torino, this award will be conferred to Lehn on December 3 in Rome.

Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus speaking at a DFG networking event for Heisenberg Fellows, 2013 · courtesy of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

🏆🧪📅With a ceremonial farewell on July 11th, 2025, Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus is being honored at Bielefeld University—where she has been a full professor of Physical Chemistry since 1994.
blogs.uni-bielefeld.de/blog/chemie/...
#womeninchemistry #womeninscience #WomenInSTEM

Ferdi Schüth, elected as second vice president of the GDNÄ 2024 · photo by Robert Eickelpoth/MPI für Kohlenforschung

Ferdi Schüth turned 65 yesterday—congratulations. He is famous for his work on #heterogeneous #catalysis. He was a pioneer in the high-throughput design and synthesis of catalysts and porous materials, not the least those useful for energy conversion.

Harald Günther · ©2023 Universität Siegen

🎁Harald Günther turns 90 today—happy birthday! Generations of students used his textbook “NMR Spectroscopy—Basic Principles, Concepts and Applications in Chemistry”. An early PhD student of Günther was Klaus Müllen whose autobiography l-i-c.org/1139 will appear in August in the LiC series.

From left: Luis Oro (EuChemS president 2007–2011), Pilar Goya (2018–2022), and David Cole-Hamilton (2015–2019) at the Chemistry Europe Fellows Reception 2018 during the 7th EuChemS Chemical Congress in Liverpool.

🎁Luis Oro turns 80 today. He is a hero in coordination and organometallic chemistry as well as in homogeneous catalysis research. He dealt with mechanistic foundations of the fields as well as with applications in organic synthesis, green chemistry, and CO₂ fixation.

The “Lives in Chemistry” book series

🕮The joy of reading is at the heart of the #WorldBookDay celebrated today. The Lives in Chemistry l-i-c.org autobiographies make excellent reading not the least because the series has been awarded a Gold Medal for outstanding book design l-i-c.org/awards.