New Term of Office for Helmut Schwarz

An impetus for the Humboldt Foundation and the German research landscape

President of the Humboldt Foun- dation, Helmut Schwarz, and President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Joachim Gauck, at the reception in the grounds of Bellevue Palace during the Humboldt Foun- dation’s 2012 annual meeting Photo: David Ausserhofer

Helmut Schwarz will continue as President of the Humboldt Foundation for another five years. In re-appointing Schwarz, Federal Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, adopted a unanimous proposal made by the Board of Trustees in May of this year. The new term of office will begin on 1 January 2013 and continue until 31 December 2017. Schwarz is the sixth President to hold the office since the Foundation was established in 1953.

“We are delighted that Helmut Schwarz will remain in office as President of the Humboldt Foundation for a second term. In the last few years, he has been a major source of inspiration for the foundation’s worldwide network and the German research landscape as a whole. His experience as a distinguished international researcher and his innumerable contacts in academia and science are invaluable to us,” commented the Foundation’s Secretary General, Enno Aufderheide.

Schwarz, a leading international researcher in molecular chemistry, has been President of the Humboldt Foundation since January 2008. After reading chemistry, he took his doctorate at Technische Universität Berlin in 1972, completed his Habilitation there in 1974 and was appointed to a professorship for the theory and practice of mass spectrometry four years later. Helmut Schwarz has been Professor for Organic Chemistry at TU Berlin since 1983. He has worked as a visiting professor at research institutions in a number of countries, including the USA, UK, Israel, Switzerland, Australia, Austria and France, and has been granted numerous honours and awards for his work in fundamental research: these include the Officer’s Cross 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, six honorary doctorates and membership of many academies. During his career, Helmut Schwarz has been granted the Otto Bayer Award for Chemistry, the German Research Foundation’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award, the Max Planck Research Award, the German Chemical Society’s Liebig Medal, the ETH Zurich’s Prelog Medal, the American Chemical Society’s F. H. Field and J. L. Franklin Award, the Otto Hahn Award for Chemistry and Physics, the European Academy of Sciences’ Blaise Pascal Medal in Chemistry and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences’ Lichtenberg Medal.

Comments

30.08.2012 Herrera Mesa, Luis
Mi más cordial enhorabuena por la renovación del prof. Helmut Schwarz como Presidente de la Fundación Alexander von Humboldt. Un fuerte abrazo Luis Herrera Presidente de la Asociación Humboldt de España

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