Gerhard Ertl Lecture & Award

The Ertl Lecture Award was established in 2008 by the three Berlin universities (Humboldt University, Technical University and Free University) and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and is awarded once a year. It commemorates former FHI Director Gerhard Ertl's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he received in 2007. The prize honours outstanding personalities and researchers in the field of catalysis where Ertl carried out exceptional research for many decades. The prize, sponsored by BASF, includes a one-week research stay at the participating Berlin institutions and a keynote lecture. The winner is typically announced in Spring, the lecture takes place around the December 10th, the anniversary of Ertl's Nobel Prize reception.

Previous Gerhard Ertl Lecture Award Winners

2023
Helmut Schwarz
Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

2022
Alec Wodtke
To a great man and scientist
A few words about Gerhard Ertl on the occasion of the Ertl Award Lecture Dec. 12, 2022 (Alec M. Wodtke)

2021
Omar M. Yaghi
University of California, Berkeley, USA

2020
Ulrike Diebold
Institut für Angewandte Physik, Technische Universität Wien

2019
Frances M. Ross
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

2018
Michele Parrinello
Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2017
Ben L. Feringa
Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, Center for Systems Chemistry & Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Netherlands

2016
J. Peter Toennies
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation, Göttingen, Germany

2015
Maki Kawai
Department of Advanced Materials Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan

2014
Richard Catlow
Department of Chemistry University College London, UK

2013
John T. Yates, Jr.
Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

2012
Charles T. Campbell
Chemistry Department, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

2011
Roald Hoffmann
Baker Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

2010
Sir John Meurig Thomas
University of Cambridge, UK

2009
Jens Nørskov
Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

2008
Gabor Somorjai
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA