The Clara Immerwahr Award is coming to FHI
Since 2012, the Berlin Cluster of Excellence UniSysCat has awarded the Clara Immerwahr Award each year to outstanding early-career female scientists in the field of catalysis research. Following the conclusion of the Cluster of Excellence, the Fritz Haber Institute has taken over the prestigious award and will present it as part of the Gerhard Ertl Lecture on 10 December 2026.
In 1900, Clara Immerwahr earned her doctorate in physical chemistry, becoming the first woman in Germany to achieve this high academic qualification in this field - a pioneering accomplishment for the time. Her life story is closely connected to the Fritz Haber Institute. In 1901, she married the chemist Fritz Haber, a brilliant scientist who later received the Nobel Prize and became the founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, now known as the Fritz Haber Institute. With her marriage, the young woman's scientific career came to an abrupt end, and she later succumbed, among other factors, to the deeply discriminatory scientific system that marginalized women at the time.
To support women in their academic careers and to honor the pioneering achievements of Clara Immerwahr, the Berlin Cluster of Excellence UniSysCat - of which researchers from the FHI have been key members since its founding - has awarded the Clara Immerwahr Award annually since 2012 to outstanding early-career female scientists in the field of catalysis research. With the conclusion of UniSysCat’s funding under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, the Award has found a new home at the Fritz Haber Institute. As an institute that devotes a significant share of its research to catalysis and is deeply committed to advancing women in the natural sciences, we are proud to carry forward the legacy of this prestigious award.
In 2026, the Clara Immerwahr Award will be presented for the first time as part of the Gerhard Ertl Lecture, hosted by the Fritz Haber Institute with the support of Faculty II – Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the TU Berlin. Thus, the Award gains a new prestigious platform on which, on 10 December in Berlin, a world-leading senior scientist and an outstanding early-career female researcher will come together.
The call for applications for the Clara Immerwahr Award is open until 15 September. We warmly welcome inspiring applications from outstanding early-career female scientists.
