🎁A great chemist has left us: Yitzhak Apeloig passed away on May 28, a pioneering physical organic and computational chemist. His work on reactive intermediates, strained molecules, and organosilicon chemistry became textbook knowledge. He shaped generations at the Technion, which he also served as president.
🎁 HBT Jonathan Sessler, who turns 70 today. Best known for his work on expanded porphyrins, including texaphyrins, Sessler has shaped porphyrinoid, supramolecular, and medicinal chemistry for decades. A gifted teacher and mentor to over 250 PhD students and postdocs, he has also founded several companies based on anti-cancer compounds.
We wish him a healthy and fruitful future.
🎁HBT
#NobelLaureate Ben Feringa turns 75 today.
Ben Feringa is perhaps most famous for his work on
#MolecularMotors, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 2016. A captivating read is his Nobel Lecture:
https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201702979Ben’s motto, “Being a scientist is a way of life,” says it all.
🌻Manfred T. Reetz, an organic chemist of the highest caliber, died of cancer on April 23, 2026. He was born on August 13, 1943, in Lower Silesia, now Poland, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1952.
Manfred Reetz, a giant of organic chemistry, will be dearly missed by his former students and colleagues as well as by the wider scientific community.
🌻The “God of Fluorine,” Karl Otto Christe, passed away on April 19, 2026, in California.
Christe was most famous for the first completely chemical synthesis of elemental fluorine. Furthermore, he synthesized iconic ions like NF₄⁺ and ClF₆⁺ as well as extremely reactive polynitrogen ions like the linear-angled N₅⁺ and the cyclic N₅⁻, and he was well known as an expert in energetic materials.
He received a wide range of prizes from the ACS, SFC, and GDCh.
🎁HBT to Dieter Jahn, who turns 75 today. Dieter Jahn joined BASF in 1979. He has served the scientific community as Chair of the Council of the Konstanz University and as President of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) in 2006/2007 and received the GDCh’s Honorary Membership in 2016. Since 2024, Dieter Jahn has been a member of the Advisory Board of the autobiography series “Lives in Chemistry” (l-i-c.org).
🌻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 meticulously trained a large number of PhD students. His achievements were recognized with the Adolf von Baeyer Memorial Medal of the GDCh.
https://l-i-c.org/1125Happy 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!
🏆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.
📅 Lutz Ackermann, Peter Gölitz, Dieter Kaufmann, and Oliver Reiser have organized an Armin de Meijere Memorial Symposium, “From Small Rings to Large Compounds” (program:
https://l-i-c.org/news-events.html#20260522), which will take place on May 22, 2026, at the University of Göttingen. Attendance is free for all, registration required (see program).
