The Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI) is a science research institute located at the heart of the academic district of Dahlem, in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The original Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, founded in 1911, was incorporated into the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

and simultaneously renamed for its first director,

Fritz Haber Fritz Jakob Haber (; 9 December 1868 – 29 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrog ...

, in 1953. The research topics covered throughout the history of the institute include

chemical kinetics Chemical kinetics, also known as reaction kinetics, is the branch of physical chemistry that is concerned with understanding the rates of chemical reactions. It is different from chemical thermodynamics, which deals with the direction in which a ...

and

reaction dynamics Reaction dynamics is a field within physical chemistry, studying why chemical reactions occur, how to predict their behavior, and how to control them. It is closely related to chemical kinetics, but is concerned with individual chemical events o ...

colloid chemistry A colloid is a mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance. Some definitions specify that the particles must be dispersed in a liquid, while others exten ...

atomic physics Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. Atomic physics typically refers to the study of atomic structure and the interaction between atoms. It is primarily concerned wit ...

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectro ...

surface chemistry Surface science is the study of physics, physical and chemistry, chemical phenomena that occur at the interface (chemistry), interface of two phase (matter), phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid–gas interfaces, solid–vacuum int ...

and

surface physics Surface science is the study of physical and chemical phenomena that occur at the interface of two phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid–gas interfaces, solid–vacuum interfaces, and liquid–gas interfaces. It includes the fiel ...

chemical physics Chemical physics is a branch of physics that studies chemical processes from a physical point of view. It focuses on understanding the physical properties and behavior of chemical systems, using principles from both physics and chemistry. This ...

and

molecular physics Molecular physics is the study of the physical properties of molecules and molecular dynamics. The field overlaps significantly with physical chemistry, chemical physics, and quantum chemistry. It is often considered as a sub-field of atomic, mo ...

theoretical chemistry Theoretical chemistry is the branch of chemistry which develops theoretical generalizations that are part of the theoretical arsenal of modern chemistry: for example, the concepts of chemical bonding, chemical reaction, valence, the surface ...

, and

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

. During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the research of the institute was directed towards Germany's military needs. To the illustrious past members of the Institute belong

Herbert Freundlich Herbert Max Finlay Freundlich (28 January 1880 in Charlottenburg – 30 March 1941 in Minneapolis) was a German chemist. Biography His father was of German Jewish descent, and his mother ( Finlay) was from Scotland. His younger brother w ...

James Franck James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German-American physicist who received the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed hi ...

, Paul Friedlander,

Rudolf Ladenburg Rudolf Walter Ladenburg (June 6, 1882 in Kiel – April 6, 1952 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a German atomic physicist. He emigrated from Germany as early as 1932 and became a Brackett Research Professor at Princeton University. When the wave of ...

Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi ( ; ; 11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism is a false account of knowle ...

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul Wigner (, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of th ...

Ladislaus Farkas Ladislaus Farkas (, ) (May 10, 1904, in Dunajská Streda, Austria-Hungary – December 31, 1948, in Monte Argentario, Italy) was an Israeli chemist, of Austro-Hungarian origin, he was the founder of the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Heb ...

Hartmut Kallmann Harmut Kallmann (5 February 1896 – 11 June 1978) was a German physicist. He is known for his work on the scintillation counter for the detection of gamma rays. Biography - Career Kallmann was born in Berlin in a Jewish family. He studied a ...

Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and ...

Robert Havemann Robert Havemann (; 11 March 1910 – 9 April 1982) was an East German chemist and dissident. Life and career He studied chemistry in Berlin and Munich from 1929 to 1933, and then later received a doctorate in physical chemistry from the Kaiser ...

Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer (13 January 1899 – 15 May 1957) was a German chemist. Biography Family, education and early career Born in Breslau, he was an older brother of martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His father was neurologist ...

, Iwan N. Stranski,

Ernst Ruska Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (; 25 December 1906 – 27 May 1988) was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in electron optics, including the design of the first electron microscope. Life and career Ernst R ...

Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 "for his discovery of the X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...

, Gerhard Borrmann,

Rudolf Brill Rudolf Brill (September 7, 1899 – February 17, 1989) was a German chemist who was born in Eschwege and died in Lenggries. Education and career Rudolf Friedrich Heinrich Erhard Ernst Brill was born in Eschwege in 1899 as the son of a businessma ...

, Kurt Moliere, Jochen Block,

Heinz Gerischer Heinz Gerischer (31 March 1919 – 14 September 1994) was a German chemist who specialized in electrochemistry. He was the thesis advisor of future Nobel laureate Gerhard Ertl. The ''Heinz Gerischer Award'' of the European section of The Electro ...

, Rolf Hosemann, Kurt Ueberreiter, Alexander Bradshaw, Elmar Zeitler, and

Gerhard Ertl Gerhard Ertl (; born 10 October 1936) is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl's research laid the foundation of modern sur ...

. Nobel Prize laureates affiliated with the institute include

(1914),

(1918),

(1925),

(1944),

(1963),

(1986),

(2007).

Structure

There are five departments with a number of research groups within:

Current department

*Inorganic Chemistry (

Beatriz Roldán Cuenya Beatriz Roldán Cuenya (born 1976 in Oviedo) is a Spanish physicist working in surface science and catalysis. Since 2017 she has been director of the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, ...

(interim)) **Reactivity (Annette Trunschke) **Electronic Structure (Axel Knop-Gericke) **Liquid/vapor Interfaces (Hendrik Bluhm) **Electron Microscopy (Thomas Lunkenbein) *Interface Science (

) **Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy (Wee Chee) **Scanning Probe Microscopy (Markus Heyde) **Photo-Electrochemical Scanning Probe Microscopy (Christopher Kley) **Thin Films (Helmut Kuhlenbeck) **Structure and Reactivity (Shamil Shaikhutdinov) **Spectro-Microscopy (Thomas Schmidt) **Operando Hard X-ray Spectroscopy (Janis Timoshenko) **Interfacial Ionics (Sebastian Oener) **Metal-Organic Interfaces (Juan J. Navarro) **Electrode-Electrolyte Interfaces (Mariana Monteiro) **Dynamics at Electrocatalytic Interfaces (Arno Bergmann) *Molecular Physics ( Gerard Meijer) **Controlled Molecules (Sandra Eibenberger-Arias) **Spectroscopy and chemistry of metal clusters and cluster complexes (André Fielicke) **Interactions of molecules with fields (

Bretislav Friedrich Bretislav Friedrich (born 29 May 1953) is a ''Research Group leader'' at the Department of Molecular Physics, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and Honorarprofessor at the Technische Universität in Berlin, Germany. He is globall ...

) **Infrared excitation of gas-phase molecules and clusters (Gert von Helden) **Cold and ultracold molecules (Stefan Truppe) **Liquid microjets (Bernd Winter) *Physical Chemistry (

Martin Wolf Martin Harry Wolf (born 16 August 1946 in London) is a British journalist who focuses on economics. He is the chief economics commentator at the ''Financial Times''. He also writes a weekly column for the French newspaper ''Le Monde''. Earl ...

) **Nanoscale Surface Chemistry (Takashi Kumagai) **Ultrafast Scanning Probe Microscopy (Melanie Müller) **Lattice Dynamics (Alex Paarmann) **Nonlinear Interfacial Spectroscopy Group (Martin Thämer) **Structural & Electronic Surface Dynamics (Ralph Ernstorfer) **Terahertz Physics (Tobias Kampfrath) **Electron Dynamiχ (A. Julia Stähler) *Theory ( Karsten Reuter) **Data-Efficient Chemical Machine Learning (Johannes Margraf) **Multiscale Modeling from Electrons to the Reactor (Sebastian Matera) **First-principles modeling of solid-liquid interfaces and electrocatalysis (Nicolas Hörmann) **Understanding of functional solid-solid interfaces at the atomistic level (Christoph Scheurer) **Interatomic machine learning potentials for energy materials (Hendrik Heenen) **Selectivity in catalysis (Vanessa Jane Bukas)

Former department

*Theory (

Matthias Scheffler Matthias Scheffler (born June 25, 1951, in Berlin) is a German theoretical physicist whose research focuses on condensed matter theory, materials science, and artificial intelligence. He is particularly known for his contributions to density-func ...

) **Unifying Concepts in Catalysis (Sergey Levchenko) **Heat and Charge Transport (Christian Carbogno) **Ab Initio Biomolecular Simulations (Carsten Baldauf) **Simulations from Ab Initio Approaches: Structure and Dynamics from Quantum Mechanics (Mariana Rossi) **Big-Data Analytics for Materials Science (Luca M. Ghiringhelli) **Crystal-Structure Prediction and Heterogeneous Catalysis (

) **Max Planck Fellow Group ( Claudia Draxl) **Max Planck Partner Group for Advanced Electronic-Structure Methods (Xinguo Ren)

References

External links

* Fritz Haber Institute Chemical research institutes Buildings and structures in Steglitz-Zehlendorf Fritz Haber Research institutes in Berlin {{Berlin-struct-stub