Gerhard Erker is giving Siegfried Hünig Lecture 2016
04/14/2016This year's Siegfried Hünig Lecture is taking place on May 12th. Professor Gerhard Erker, awardee of the Federal Cross of Merit, is going to speak about his highly innovative research topic "Frustrated Lewis Pairs", thus complying with the desire of the 95 years old guest of honour, Siegfried Hünig.
After his Postdoctoral fellowship at the Princeton University, his habilitation in Bochum (1981) and a short time as a Heisenberg-Fellow at the "Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim a. d.Ruhr", Gerhard Erker has been a C3 Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Würzburg from 1985-1990. After this position he accepted the call for a chair at the University of Münster and is active there since then.
Professor Erker's scientific achievements have been recognized with a number of awards, including the "Eugen und Ilse Seibold-Preis" of the DFG for establishing the first international graduate school (Münster/Nagoya), and the "Adolf-von-Baeyer-Denkmünze" which was awarded by the GDCh (2009), whose presidency he held from 2000-2001. Gerhard Erker is member of several academies, amongst other of the "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina". His ample international relationships are well represented by holding positions as an associate professor at the University of Santa Barbara, California and at the Fudan University, Shanghai.
His research group is focusing on the following fields: Frustrated Lewis pairs, small molecule binding and activation; Carbon-carbon bond activation and 1,1-carboboration chemistry; Development of novel catalyst systems; Metal catalysed polymerization reactions; Surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis; Unusual organic and organometallic compounds containing planar-tetra-coordinate carbon. His more than 650 publications have been cited over 20,000 times.
"Frustrated Lewis Pairs: Metal-Free Dihydrogen Activation and More" is the title chosen by Erker for the Siegfried Hünig Lecture, which will take place on May 12, at 4:30 pm in lecture hall B, located in the central building of the chemistry center.
