About the Institute
For many years Würzburg's chemistry department has performed very well in international rankings. Here, the Institute of Organic Chemistry plays a key role as a partner in most of the faculty's collaborative research projects. Examples are the Bavarian research programs "Solar Technologies Go Hybrid" (SolTech) and the "Bavarian Polymer Institute" (BPI), the “Wilhelm Conrad X-ray Research Center for Complex Material Systems” (RCCM) and several DFG-funded programs (FOR1809, GRK 1221, GRK 2112, GRK 2581, IRTG 2991, SFB 630), often with PIs from the Institute of Organic Chemistry.
In fact, Würzburg has been a place of great chemists and important discoveries since the middle of the 19th century. Despite Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (Nobel Prize for the discovery of the X-Rays) being the most famous scientist of the Julius-Maximilians-University, the chemistry department is proud of five Nobel Prize laureates of chemistry working in Würzburg in the last century. Emil Fischer (Nobel Prize 1902) is likely the most important of them. Thanks to his discoveries about the structure of sugars, the Institute of Organic Chemistry, successor of the Institute directed by Emil Fischer, was declared a historical site of chemistry by the American Chemical Society in 2014 (press article).
