Herbert Waldmann receives the Liebig Medal

Herbert Waldmann receives the Liebig Medal

Herbert Waldmann was awarded for his outstanding achievements in the entire field of chemistry

June 18, 2020
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Waldmann, Director of the Department of Chemical Biology, is awarded the Liebig Medal of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) for his outstanding achievements in the entire field of chemistry. Waldmann was honored in this field recently with the 2017 Paul Karrer Medal by the University of Zurich.

The Liebig Medal has been awarded by the German Chemical Society (GDCh) since 1950 to important university and industrial scientists in memory of the chemist Justus von Liebig. In addition to the silver commemorative coin, the honour is endowed with €7,500.

Herbert Waldmann is a leading protagonist in the field of chemical biology. At the interface between biology and chemistry, he combines methods from both disciplines and uses molecular probes as powerful tools for investigating biological phenomena.

Currently Waldmann is working with his team on the development of so-called pseudo natural substances. In this novel approach, different natural substances are first reduced to their fragments which are then combined with each other in unprecedented ways. By this means, it was possible to develop completely new active substances that can, for example, stop the uptake of glucose in cancer cells.

Since his appointment as Director at the MPI of Molecular Physiology and as Chair of Organic Chemistry at the TU Dortmund in 1999, Waldmann has contributed significantly to the development of Dortmund as a internationally renowned centre for chemical biology. He is the initiator of the Chemical Genomics Centre founded in 2005 in Dortmund, which the Max Planck Society runs together with research-driven pharmaceutical companies. As an author, Herbert Waldmann has published so far over 500 articles in renowned scientific journals. For his work in the field of chemical biology, he has been awarded numerous prizes and honors, such as the Otto Bayer Prize, the Emil Fischer Medal of the German Chemical Society Chemists (GDCh) and an Honorary Doctorate from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The German Chemical Society (GDCh)

The Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) is the largest chemical society in continental Europe with members from academe, education, industry and other areas. The GDCh supports chemistry in teaching, research and application and promotes the understanding of chemistry in the public.

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