🎁 Happy 80th birthday to K. C. Nicolaou—master of “the art of total synthesis”, whose landmark syntheses of Calicheamicin, Taxol, Brevetoxin B, Epothilone, and Vancomycin helped shape modern organic chemistry. #TotalSynthesis #OrganicChemistry

🎁A great chemist has left us: Yitzhak Apeloig passed away on May 28, a pioneering physical organic and computational chemist. His work on reactive intermediates, strained molecules, and organosilicon chemistry became textbook knowledge.

🎁 HBT Jonathan Sessler, who turns 70 today. Best known for his work on expanded porphyrins, including texaphyrins, Sessler has shaped porphyrinoid and supramolecular chemistry for decades. A gifted teacher and mentor to over 250 PhD students and postdocs, we wish him a healthy and fruitful future.

🎁HBT #NobelLaureate Ben Feringa turns 75 today. Ben Feringa is perhaps most famous for his work on #MolecularMotors, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 2016. A captivating read is his Nobel Lecture: doi.org/10.1002/anie... Ben’s motto, “Being a scientist is a way of life,” says it all.

🌻Manfred T. Reetz, an organic chemist of the highest caliber, died of cancer on April 23, 2026. Manfred Reetz, a giant of organic chemistry, will be dearly missed by his former students and colleagues as well as by the wider scientific community.

🌻The “God of Fluorine,” Karl Otto Christe, passed away on April 19, 2026, in California. Christe was most famous for the first completely chemical synthesis of elemental fluorine. He was well known as an expert in energetic materials. He received a wide range of prizes from the ACS, SFC, and GDCh.

🎁HBT to Dieter Jahn, who turns 75 today. Dieter Jahn joined BASF in 1979 and has served the scientific community in manifold ways. Since 2024, Dieter Jahn has been a member of the Advisory Board of the autobiography series “Lives in Chemistry” (l-i-c.org).

🌻Rest in peace, Günther Maier. The chemist who made one “impossible molecule” after another died on April 10 at the age of 94. He was a modest man who trained a large number of PhD students. His achievements were recognized with the Adolf von Baeyer Memorial Medal of the GDCh. l-i-c.org/1125

Happy Easter from the LiC team! Our Easter Bunny has been busy painting Easter eggs this year. Wishing you a joyful holiday and a colorful spring!

🏆Congratulations to Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus, who was awarded honorary membership of the Deutsche #BunsenGesellschaft (bunsen.de) today. Fittingly, this comes on Bunsen’s birthday. She published her autobiography, “Burning for Science—A Woman in a Technical Field” (l-i-c.org/1137), only last year.

📅 Lutz Ackermann, Peter Gölitz, Dieter Kaufmann, and Oliver Reiser have organized an Armin de Meijere Memorial Symposium, “From Small Rings to Large Compounds”, which will take place on May 22, 2026, at the University of Göttingen. Registration required (see program l-i-c.org/news-events....).

🌻Henning Hopf passed away on March 12 only three months after his 85th birthday. A great organic chemist who had deeply cared about our community—a true “mensch”—has left us. Lives in Chemistry l-i-c.org lost a most insightful Advisory Board member who had enormously contributed to this endeavor.

🎁HBT to Hans-Joachim Freund, who turns 75 today. Hajo Freund is not only an exceptional scientist; he also served the community in many ways—for example, as a textbook author and journal editor. He has been a great mentor whose “academic footprint” is enormous.

4,000+ Directory of Key Modern Chemists 🕮The complete directory of names for the first 15 autobiographies in the series “Lives in Chemistry” is now available for free use. This provides immediate and convenient access to 4,234 pages and 3,095 illustrations. l-i-c.org/licdir.html

🎁HBT Carsten Reinhardt, who turns 60 today. His oeuvre in the history of science is vast and wide-ranging, with a focus on the history of chemistry. He has served several times as chair of the GDCh’s History of Chemistry Division, and he has been chair of the LiC Advisory Board from the beginning.

Throughout his live in chemistry, Ryoji Noyori met many illustrious #chemists from all over the world. Have a look at the richly illustrated—136 photos on 159 pages—“Long, Memorable #Journey with the #International Community” that supplements his autobiography. Download: doi.org/10.47261/156...

🌻Sad news: Wolfgang M. Beck, Professor Emeritus at LMU Munich, passed away on January 19. He was born on May 5, 1932, in Munich and stayed there almost all his long life. A towering figure in the inorganic chemistry community and a most friendly “Mensch” is dearly missed. www.gnt-verlag.de/1141

🎁HBT Ralf Ludwig, who turns 65 today. He holds the Chair of General Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Rostock and heads the #VibrationalSpectroscopy in #Catalysis group at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT), also in Rostock. www.linkedin.com/posts/livesi...

🌻Rest in peace, Mieczysław (Mike) Mąkosza. This hero of organic chemistry passed away at the age of 91 on January 14. www.linkedin.com/posts/livesi...

Season’s Greetings! Wishing you good health and fresh energy for 2026—for all the ups and downs on your stairs. Upstairs, downstairs—guided by LiC #autobiographies—may you create your own personal chemical path. More to come before the end of 2026. #AcademicPublishing #ScienceCommunication

🌻A great loss: Armin de Meijere passed away at age 86 on December 17 in Göttingen. His distinguished career spanned both the golden age of physical organic chemistry & the rise of transition-metal catalysis. 250 PhD students & postdocs have lost an exceptional mentor—and chemistry has lost a giant.

🎁HBT Henning Hopf, who turns 85 today. He is an eminent hydrocarbon chemist who made major contributions to alkenes and alkines, allenes and cumulenes, as well as cyclophanes and dendralenes, and he wrote “Classics in Hydrocarbon Synthesis”, published 25 years ago by Wiley-VCH. #OrganicChemistry

🎁HBT Stephen B. H. Kent, who turns 80 today. Distance running was his passion and he also went for long distances, or rather long sequences, when it came to the synthesis of peptides and proteins, a field that his group has revolutionized through the development of “chemical ligation” methods.

A puzzle advent calendar curated by the publisher together with an art gallery starting today, all about science and art—with a big dose of chemistry hidden inside!

GNT Publishing@gntpub.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🎄🔬🎨 New puzzle #AdventCalendar #ScienceArtTechAdvent—Intro Starting tomorrow, a new daily 🇩🇪 language puzzle with English subtitles about science, technology, and art will drop here every day. Post your answer in the comments and pick up some fascinating facts along the way!

🎁Happy 60th birthday, Peter Schreiner! With the spectacular synthesis of “impossible” #hexanitrogen (doi.org/10.1038/s415...) he basically gave himself the perfect present. #OrganicChemistry #MatrixIsolation #Organocatalysis #ComputationalChemistry

🎁HBT Paul Knochel (LMU Munich), who turns 70 today—unbelievable knowing his charming boyish appeal. Developing new synthetic methods, in particular based on organometallic compounds, and applying them in the #TotalSynthesis of natural products has become a hallmark of the Knochel group.

📅🧪Today on 30 October 2025, 4 p.m. @unibielefeld: #WomenInChemistry—Empowering Passionate Scientists Colloquium An event dedicated to honoring the achievements, challenges, and aspirations of women in chemistry, with l-i-c.org/1137 K. Kohse-Hoeinghaus Event info: www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/...

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 Susumu Kitagawa (Japan), Richard Robson (Australia) and Omar M. Yaghi (USA) have been awarded for the development of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) Congratulations!! www.chemistryviews.org/nobel-prize-...

chemistryviews.org

🕮At the OMCOS XXII Conference in Kyoto #OMCOSXXII #OMCOS22, on Monday just two days before his 87th birthday today, #NobelLaureate Ryoji Noyori received a Certificate to honor him for writing his scientific autobiography l-i-c.org/1135 “Research Should be Fresh, Simple, and Clear”.

🎁Albert Eschenmoser would have turned 100 today. He passed away on July 14, 2023, after a long and successful journey through the wonderlands of organic chemistry—that he described in his characteristic style in the recently published autobiography l-i-c.org/1136