Centennial of the Kaiser Wilhelm/Max Planck Institute of Chemistry

On October 23, 2012, the Mainz Institute will celebrate its 100th anniversary since the precursor institution - the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin - opened its doors October 23, 1912.

The Institute had to leave Berlin at the end of World War II and moved under its director at the time, Otto Hahn, to the Swabian Alb. In 1949, the institute of Chemistry was integrated into the Max Planck Society, and has been located since then in Mainz.

Within these last 100 years the research topics of the chemists varied at least as much as their research sites: The study of plant pigments by Nobel laureate Richard Willstätter was followed by the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann in 1938/39 for which Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945. In the 1960s, the Institute was in the public spotlight due to its lunar research. And in the 1980s Paul Crutzen firmly established atmospheric chemistry as a research direction with studies of ozone degradation (for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995). Today, the Mainz Institute focuses primarily on the chemical interactions between soil and atmosphere.

To mark the anniversary, the scientific symposium “Earth System Chemistry: Future Perspectives” was held on October 22, 2012 and an open house day will be on October 28, 2012 respectively. In addition, the exhibition “Milestones”, which can be visited at the Institute from October 23, 2012 until the end of January 2013, will show important stages of the 100 years of the Kaiser-Wilhelm/Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.