Manfred Baerns (23 July 1934 – 2 February 2021) was a German chemist.

Career

After a 2-years postdoctoral fellowship at the

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...

(Argonne, Illinois), a further 5 years in academia and a 5-year career in industry, was a full professor for chemical technology and reaction engineering at

Ruhr-University Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

(Germany) from 1974–1995. He then acted as scientific director of the "Institute of Applied Chemistry Berlin-Adlershof" until 2003. He was lately a guest scientist as

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

at the "Fritz-Haber-Institute" of the Max-Planck-Society at Berlin. Baerns was a member of numerous scientific committees and a referee for research proposal at a national level. From 1991 to 1997 he was member of the board DECHEMA (a scientific association of chemical technology,

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of the operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials ...

and biotechnology), and a permanent member of the German

Chemical Society The Chemical Society was a scientific society formed in 1841 (then named the Chemical Society of London) by 77 scientists as a result of increased interest in scientific matters. Chemist Robert Warington was the driving force behind its creation. ...

, the German Bunsen Society for

Physical Chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mech ...

, German Society for Coal, Oil and Gas, and finally the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

. He received the DECHEMA titanium medal, the award of the 4th World Congress on Oxidation Catalysis, for which he acted as president, honorary professorships of the Humboldt University and the

Technical University An institute of technology (also referred to as technological university, technical university, university of technology, polytechnic university) is an institution of tertiary education that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science ...

, both at Berlin, honorary membership of the Leibniz-Institute for Catalysis at Rostock (Germany). Baerns was an author of about 300 scientific publications and three books on

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemistry, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. When chemical reactions occur, the atoms are rearranged and the reaction is accompanied by an Gibbs free energy, ...

engineering and catalysis. His research focused on

heterogeneous catalysis Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis where the Phase (matter), phase of catalysts differs from that of the reagents or product (chemistry), products. The process contrasts with homogeneous catalysis where the reagents, products and catalyst exis ...

(oil and gas for chemicals) and chemical reaction engineering. He died in February 2021 at the age of 86.Manfred Baerns

Books

* * * Manfred Baerns, Martin Holena, Combinatorial development of solid catalytic materials - Design of high throughput experiments, data analysis, data mining, 2009, Imperial College Press, London, 178 pages

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baerns, Manfred 1934 births 2021 deaths German physical chemists