Hans Wolfgang Spiess

    Hans Wolfgang Spiess, born in 1942, received his doctoral degree in physical chemistry in 1968 from the Univ. of Frankfurt with H. Hartmann. After a postdoctoral stay at Florida State Univ. (with R. K. Sheline), he returned to Germany in 1970 and joined the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (with K. H. Hausser), taking part in the rapid development of novel NMR techniques for studying molecular motion in liquids and solids. In 1978, he finished his habilitation in physical chemistry at the Univ. of Mainz in the group of H. Sillescu. Subsequently, he held professorships of physical chemistry at the Univ. of Münster (1981–1982) and macromolecular chemistry at the Univ. of Bayreuth (1983–1984). In 1984, he was appointed a director of the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz.

    Spiess has served as chairman of the European Polymer Federation (1991–1992) and as chairman of the Capital Investment Committee of the German Science Foundation (1994 –1996). From 1999 till 2005 he has been a member of the Scientific Council of the Federal Republic of Germany.

    His achievements have been honored by several distinctions, including the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 1987, the European Ampere Prize, the Liebig Medal of the German Chemical Society, the Award of the Society of Polymer Science (Japan) in 2002, the Walther Nernst Medal of the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry in 2007 and the Paul J. Flory Research Prize in 2010. He is doctor honoris causa of the Technical Univ. of Cluj-Napoca, Romania (1997), and of Adam Mickiewicz Univ., Poznan, Poland (1998).

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