Beatriz Roldan Cuenya has been honored with the Heilbronner-Hückel Lecture 

Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, Director of the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute, has been selected to present this year's prestigious Heilbronner-Hückel Lecture. This award entails a series of lectures in Swizerland organized jointly by the Swiss Chemical Society and the German Chemical Society. She will speak about her research at the major research universities in Switzerland.

The Heilbronner-Hückel Lecture, named after the two chemists Edgar Heilbronner and Erich Hückel, is an annual lecture series launched in 2009 as a joint initiative by the Swiss Chemical Society and the German Chemical Society (GDCh). Each year, one of the societies invites a scientist from the neighboring country to give a series of lectures at four to five universities in their home country.

In 2026, the Swiss Chemical Society, together with the GDCh selected Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, Director of the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute. The Heilbronner-Hückel Lecture will take her to Switzerland, where she will present her research at universities from Zurich to Lausanne. The opening lecture will take place at ETH Zurich and is being organized by Prof. Dr. Martin Quack.

The Heilbronner-Hückel Lecture is one of the “named lectures” of the German Chemical Society, which were established in collaboration with international partner organizations and is bestowed as a special honor upon distinguished scientists in the respective countries. The named lectures serve to strengthen scientific cooperation between countries and are based on reciprocity.

Prof. Erich Hückel (Berlin 1896 - Marburg 1980) was a German theoretical chemist and is considered a pioneer of quantum chemistry. Hückel studied physics and mathematics at the University of Göttingen and obtained his habilitation at ETH Zurich. He is known for formulating the Hückel approximation for calculating molecular orbitals. The Hückel rule, which follows from this approximation, can be used to predict whether a chemical compound is aromatic.

Prof. Edgar Heilbronner (Munich 1921 - Herrliberg 2006) was a German-Swiss theoretical chemist. He emigrated to Switzerland with his wife to escape the Nazi regime and studied chemistry at ETH Zurich, where he later also received his habilitation. In 1968, he moved to the University of Basel. Heilbronner worked intensively on the approximation developed by Erich Hückel and developed the idea of aromatic compounds with the topology of a Möbius strip, which could be synthesized for the first time only in 2003.

The lecture tour is planned as follows:

• Mon, October 5, 2026, 17.00h, EPFL, co-organized with University of Geneva
  Lecture hall tbd: EPFL Lausanne, 
  «The Secret Life of CO₂ Electroreduction Catalysts unveiled by Operando Spectroscopy and Microscopy»
• Tue, October 6, 2026, 16.00h, ETH Zurich, co-organizerd with University of Zurich
  Lecture hall HCI G7, ETH Zurich, D-CHAB, Vladimir Prelog Weg, 8093 Zurich
  «Catalysts: More Alive than Previously Thought»
• Wed, October 7, 2026, 16.30h, University of Basel
  Lecture Hall U1.402, University of Basel, Universitäres Zentrum für Zahnmedizin Basel (UZB), Mattenstrasse 40, 4058 Basel
  «The Power of Imperfections: A New Paradigm in Catalysis»
• Thu, October 8, 2026, 14.15h, University of Bern, co-organized with University of Fribourg
  Lecture hall EG16, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern
  «Catalysts: More Alive than Previously Thought»