Diels-Planck-Lecture

Since 2014, the members of KiNSIS have been awarding the Diels-Planck-Medal to outstanding international scientists in the field of nano and surface sciences. During a festive ceremony, the award winner presents their research in the so-called Diels-Planck-Lecture. Each KiNSIS member can propose a candidate and all members cast their vote.

The award is named after Nobel Prize winners Max Planck and Otto Diels, the founders of the Kiel nanosciences.

Max Planck was born in Kiel in 1858 and was appointed professor of theoretical physics by Kiel University in 1885. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for his ground-breaking work on quantum theory. Otto Diels was professor of chemistry at Kiel University until his retirement in 1945. Together with his doctoral student Kurt Alder, he developed a class of chemical reactions that later became known as the 'Diels-Alder reaction'. It represents one of the most powerful methods for the synthesis of chemical compounds, including nanomaterials. Diels was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1950.

• 2022 Prof. Claus Ropers, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Natural Sciences, Göttingen (Germany)
• 2021 Prof. R. Stanley Williams, Texas A&M University (USA)
  2020 Prof. Michael Grätzel, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL (Switzerland)
  2019 Prof. Zhong Lin Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  2018 Prof. Maki Kawai, Director General of the Institute for Molecular Science, Okazaki (Japan)
  2017 Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg and Imperial College London (UK)
  2016 Prof. Sotiris Pratsinis, ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
  2015 Prof. Ben Feringa, University of Groningen (Netherlands)
  2014 Dr Gerhard Meyer, IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich (Switzerland)