Günther Maier, geboren 1932, ist früh fasziniert von "verbotenen Molekülen".

Ob in Karlsruhe, Baltimore, Marburg oder Gießen, immer wollte er neue Hürden überwinden, die als unüberwindbar galten. Das zum Molekül des Jahres 1978 gekürte Tetrahedran wurde zu seinem Markenzeichen. In kleinen, aufeinander aufbauenden Geschichten beschreibt und reflektiert der Autor sein Leben, seine chemischen Wege und Umwege, seine Vorbilder und seine Zusammenarbeit mit den Mitarbeitern. Es öffnet sich eine Welt von ganz besonderen Molekülen, die durch Experimente...

Creative "cheating" led Stephen B. H. Kent, born in 1945, to solve one of the Grand Challenges of 20th Century chemistry: the total synthesis of protein molecules. Twenty-five formative years in his native New Zealand had prepared him in manifold ways. Vigorous debates at the family dinner table, combined with secondary school classes in Kantian moral philosophy and the discipline of competitive distance running influenced his later successes in scientific research. As a university undergraduate he was fascinated by the ability of enzymes to catalyze chemical reactions and set out...

Who has had the luck to receive the Nobel Prize as a surprise birthday present? The answer is Gerhard Ertl, born in 1936.

In his youth he was interested in music, chemistry, and physics, and started university in Stuttgart followed by Paris and Munich. The door to research opened itself in his diploma thesis. His courage showed itself early on when he was a PhD student, and led him to the novel field of surface science and so to heterogeneous catalysis where he became one of the great pioneers.

He discovered at an atomic level the mechanisms and kinetics of...

Vom Laborlehrling ohne Abitur zum Rektor, ohne Postdoc-Erfahrung zum Professor und vom Skilehrer zum Ministerpräsidenten-Berater: Franz Effenberger, 1930 im Altvatergebirge geboren, hat viel aus seinen Talenten gemacht! Er kam nach der Vertreibung 1946 per Los nach Schwaben, bleibt dieser Region treu, da sie seinem Naturell entspricht.

Am Karriereanfang stehen neue Synthesemethoden sowie Aromaten und Heterocyclen; später glänzt er mit Pionierbeiträgen zur Bio- und Nanotechnologie. Mechanismen aufzuspüren ist seine Leidenschaft.

Die Anwendung seiner Chemie...

Immer wenn er meinte, sein Forschungsgebiet verstanden zu haben, suchte er nach einer neuen Arbeitsrichtung. Er machte sich so, entgegen manchem Rat, einen großen Namen in der NMR-Spektroskopie sowie in der Bioorganischen und Medizinischen Chemie.

Horst Kessler (*1940), einst sehr guter Sportschwimmer, zog seine "Bahn in der Chemie" von Suhl über Leipzig nach Tübingen, Frankfurt und schließlich 1989 zur TU München (TUM). Dort leitete er das von ihm gegründete Bayerische NMR-Zentrum, ein Leuchtturm der medizinischen Proteinforschung.

Die räumliche Anordnung von...

A momentous decision was made by HUBERT SCHMIDBAUR, born in 1934 in Landsberg, Bavaria, when he applied for a top-notch scholarship in 1953 choosing "Chemistry"-and thus starting his 70-year journey in science.

He began his studies in the post-war ruins of Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University chemistry buildings, and embarked also on industry internships abroad to finally choose the sulfur labs of Max Schmidt for his PhD in 1960. He then left sulfur and Munich and went off to take care of silicon and many other elements, first in Marburg and Würzburg and...

LARRY E. OVERMAN, born in 1943 in Chicago, had joined the newly founded Faculty of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine in 1971. It became his homebase for more than 50 years until his retirement as Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus.

How come that he and his wife had chosen Irvine? That over 300 graduate students and postdocs have chosen his lab? That he served also as Chair of the Chemistry Section of the US National Academy of Science, as a founder and consultant in the pharmaceutical industry? Who were his mentors, his...