Editor's Page pubs.acs.org/Organometallics
Award-Winning Organometallic Chemistry: The 2012 KlungWilhelmy-Weberbank-Preis
T
his issue highlights an award, the Klung-WilhelmyWeberbank-Preis,1,2 that is likely unfamiliar to most readers outside of Germany. The prize is a collaborative undertaking involving three foundations and has the objective of honoring, in alternate years, outstanding young German chemists and physicists, respectively. Recipients receive an honorarium of 75000 Euros, making it one of the most lucrative prizes for younger chemists worldwide. This even bests (at recent exchange rates) the Hackerman Award of the Welch Foundation,3 which is restricted to chemists within 10 years of their initial academic appointments in the state of Texas in the USA. The year 2012 awardee is Professor Tobias Ritter of Harvard University, a renaissance chemist whose research prominently features organometallic chemistry. However, his scholarship is by no means bounded by the field, and the breadth of his interests is reflected in part by one of his graduate degrees, an MBA. A distinct enthusiasm for his chemistry is evident in Figure 1, and a brief biography can be found in the award article that follows.
Figure 2. Prof. Tobias Ritter being presented the year 2012 KlungWilhelmy-Weberbank-Preis by Dr. Lothar Wilhemy. Photo by Elke A. Jung-Wolff.
Tobias, we congratulate you for the diverse accomplishments that served as the basis for this prestigious award. Your creative chemistry has inspired the organometallic community, and we look forward to many stimulating contributions from your laboratory in the years to come.
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John A. Gladysz, Editor in Chief REFERENCES
(1) http://www.klung-wilhelmy-weberbank-preis.de. (2) Previous Editor’s Page in this series: Gladysz, J. A. Organometallics 2013, 32, 941. (3) http://www.welch1.org/awards/norman-hackerman-award-inchemical-research. (4) “Mit dieser Auszeichnung werden die hervorragenden Leistungen des Preisträgers in der Chemie gewürdigt, insbesondere seine zukunftsweisenden Arbeiten auf dem Gebiet der metallorganischen Chemie and der spezifischen Fluoridierung biomedizinisch relevanter Moleküle.” (5) Gladysz, J. A. Organometallics 2012, 31, 3815. (6) Gladysz, J. A. Organometallics 2011, 30, 1747. Figure 1. Prof. Tobias Ritter at the blackboard in his laboratory. Photo courtesy of Tobias Ritter.
Professor Ritter’s laudatio emphasizes his “trendsetting research in the areas of organometallic chemistry and the selective fluorination of biomedically significant molecules”.4 The prize was presented in a ceremony in Berlin on November, 1, 2012 (see Figure 2). The sponsors are justifiably proud that, of the approximately 40 awardees to date, five have received the Nobel Prize, and several others are frequent contributors to this journal (Helmut Schwarz,5 Wolfgang A. Herrmann, Wolfgang Schnick, Carsten Bolm, Matthias Drieß,6 Ingo Krossing, and Stefan Hecht). © 2013 American Chemical Society
Published: April 8, 2013 2041
dx.doi.org/10.1021/om400203h | Organometallics 2013, 32, 2041−2041
