Otto-Stern Award of the GDCh Division of Magnetic Resonance

Submission deadline: January 7, 2024

objective
Since 2020, the Division of Magnetic Resonance of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) has been awarding the Otto-Stern Award at irregular intervals, at most once a year, in recognition of the professional life’s work of internationally outstanding personalities in the field of magnetic resonance. The prize is awarded in memory of Otto Stern, whose work on demonstrating spin quantization created the fundamental prerequisites for the use of magnetic resonance.

The price
The award comes with a certificate of award, a trophy and an invitation to a celebratory dinner. The award ceremony usually takes place during the Division's discussion conference. After the award ceremony, the awardee should give a keynote address. The Division Board decides on the award of the prize.

nomination
People can be nominated who have made extraordinary scientific contributions to magnetic resonance in their lifetime work, from which the Division or its members have benefited. All members of the Division are entitled to nominate; Self-nominations are not possible. All proposals consist of an informal appreciation of the special professional merits and a curriculum vitae (including contact details). Each nomination will be considered for the current application year and two subsequent years.

submission
Please send all proposals electronically and summarized in a PDF file to the GDCh Office, attention Maike Fries.

On April 15, 2023 in Brussels, the Division of Magnetic Resonance of the German Chemical Society awarded the Otto-Stern Award 2023 to Prof. Dr. Jean-Jeener:

"Professor Jeener invented two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy and first formulated the two-pulse experiment which was named COZY by Richard Ernst later on. Together with Richard Ernst, he developed the NOESY and EXSY experiments both theoretically and experimentally. After more than 50 years, polarization transfer via J couplings, as well as transfer via relaxation phenomena and exchange are still cornerstones of NMR spectroscopy for chemical analysis and for life and materials sciences. Professor Jean Jeener's work shaped the NMR spectroscopy that we know today."

On the occasion of the 43rd FGMR Annual Discussion Meeting in September 2022 in Karlsruhe, the Division of Magnetic Resonance of the German Chemical Society awarded the Otto-Stern Award 2022 to Prof. Dr. Joerg Karger:

" In recognition of his fundamental contributions to the application of pulsed field gradient NMR spectroscopy in the analysis of molecular transport processes in porous materials. Starting with NMR investigations of transport processes, Prof. Dr. Kärger has influenced NMR spectroscopy in a broad and interdisciplinary manner: He has the establishment of fundamental physical models of mass transport at the molecular level.This includes multi-regional diffusion, the consideration of adsorption processes, and also the experimental demonstration of a one-dimensional diffusion.His work on mass transport and the sorption of complex nanoporous materials radiates far into the material and engineering sciences The knowledge from his work on molecular processes is of great relevance for technical applications such as molecular separation processes and heterogeneous catalysis.His work thus shows in an exemplary manner how magnetic resonance at the highest level, consistently methodically advanced, to solve current challenges, e.g. in the areas of sustainability , climate and energy. "

The first Otto-Stern Award of the Division of Magnetic Resonance was awarded to Prof. Dr. hc mult. Awarded to Tony Keller:

"In recognition of his fundamental and outstanding contributions to the development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy - from noise decoupling and the introduction of pulse Fourier spectroscopy in commercial spectrometers to superconducting magnets and fully digitized spectrometers to cryo heads and high-field spectrometers - which gave NMR spectroscopy a broad scientific application in Germany and the world and thus made a decisive contribution to the establishment of NMR spectroscopy in chemistry as well as life and materials science Otto-Stern Award 2020 commemorates the discovery of directional quantization in the spin states "up" and "down". ". Tony Keller has led the development of NMR spectroscopy in the "up" direction."