© AvH / David Ausserhofer
The World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC) is awarding the 2015 Schrödinger medal to Helmut Schwarz.
The medal is granted annually and has previously targeted scientists working on theoretical and computational chemistry. Having chosen Helmut Schwarz this year, WATOC has decided to honour an experimenter and eminent international researcher in molecular chemistry. The Medal will be awarded to Helmut Schwarz for the successful combination of seminal experimental and computational research on mass spectrometry and catalysis.
Helmut Schwarz has been a member of UniCat since 2007. Here, he does research within the UniCat Research Fields D1 and D2 on gas-phase ion and physical organic chemistry. Helmut Schwarz combines experimental studies with theoretical methods.
Helmut Schwarz has been a professor at TU Berlin since 1978. Firstly, he was appointed as a Professor of theoretical and experimental mass spectrometry. In 1983 he became Professor of organic chemistry.
Schwarz has worked at a number of research institutions abroad, in countries such as the United Kingdom, Israel, France and Japan. He is a member of various academies and bodies and was the Vice President of the German Research Foundation. Since 2008 he has been the President of the Humboldt Foundation.
Schwarz has received numerous honors for his work in fundamental research, including the German Research Foundation’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the Max Planck Research Award, the German Chemical Society’s Liebig Medal and the European Academy of Sciences’ Blaise Pascal Medal in Chemistry.
WATOC’s Schrödinger Medal is named after the Austrian physicist and Nobel Laureate, Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. The award winners are nominated by the members of the association and selected by the WATOC Board. The award will be conferred at the next WATOC Congress in Munich in 2017 (27 August - 1 September).
WATOC was founded in 1982 as the World Association of Theoretical Organic Chemists in order to encourage the development and application of theoretical methods. From its very beginning, WATOC was never really restricted to organic chemistry, and its activities quickly expanded to cover all of chemistry. In recognition of this, the WATOC Board adopted the name "World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists" in 2005.