First Award Ceremony of the Dr. Reich Prize
06/16/2023For the first time, the Dr. Reich Prize, established in honor of its founder, was awarded to Franziska Schneider and Leonard Fink. It was presented as part of the Siegfried Hünig Lecture 2023 by Prof. Christoph Lambert, member of the Board of Trustees of Tauber-Dr. Reich Foundation.
The two awardees had completed their master's degree in 2022 with an overall grade of 1.1 (with 1.0 being the best possible garde). Franziska Schneider's master's thesis is titled Fluorescent Merocyanine Dimers by Ring Closing Metathesis, Leonard Fink's thesis is titled Synthesis of BTBT-substituted phthalocyanines with siloxane peripherals as organic semiconductor materials. Both continue their research at the Institute of Organic Chemistry with the aim of obtaining their doctorates, Franziska Schneider with Prof. Frank Würthner, Leonard Fink with Prof. Matthias Lehmann.
Dr. Hans Reich
Hans Heiner Reich comes from a traditional carpentry company in Würzburg, which still exists today. He studied chemistry at the University of Würzburg and received his doctorate in 1973 from our faculty under Prof. Kuball on polarization spectroscopy of aromatic hydrocarbons. He then joined BASF where he became Senior Vice President in the international plasticizers division. Dr. Reich was a passionate chemist, hunter and, above all, a proud native of Würzburg. Unfortunately, he died in 2018 at the age of 75, but years earlier he and his wife, Marlene Tauber, had decided to transfer their joint assets to a foundation.
The Tauber Dr. Reich Foundation
After Dr. Reich died so unexpectedly early, Mrs. Tauber decided to establish the foundation in memory of her husband already during her lifetime. Since 2020, the non-profit the Tauber Dr. Reich Foundation, according to the statutes, aims to "promote science and research as well as education, popular and vocational training, including student aid in the Department of Gynaecology of the University Hospital Würzburg and in the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität".
The Dr. Reich Prize
Out of gratitude to the founders and in honor of the late Dr. Reich, part of the foundation's income will be used to finance the Dr. Reich Prize, which was established in 2022. This prize, which is endowed with 1,000 EUR, is awarded to one or two graduates of the Chemistry program who have shown outstanding academic achievements and whose master's thesis was written at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Würzburg and evaluated with the top grade of 1.0.
