Centenary Prize 2009 Winner

Martin Jansen
Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Germany

Awarded for his outstanding creative contributions to solid state and materials chemistry.

About the winner

Martin Jansen studied chemistry at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany, where he gained his doctorate in 1973. After his habilitation in 1978, he accepted a professorial chair for Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Hannover. In 1987 he moved to the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University of Bonn. 

Since 1998, he has been a member of the scientific council of the Max-Planck Society and a director at the Max-Planck Institute for solid-state research in Stuttgart. His main re¬search lies in the field of preparative solid-state chemistry, crystal chemistry, materials research, and the structure-property relationship of solids. 

Among his most prominent achievements there are the invention and development of random Si/B/N/C networks as a new class of high performance ceramics and discovery of attractive interactions between d10 configurated silver ions, which has inspired him to create novel solids consisting of extended clusters of subvalent silver. His approach to synthesis planning in solid state and materials chemistry, based on the "energy landscape concept of chemical matter", is pointing far to the future. 

For his contributions to solid state and materials chemistry he has received numerous awards, among these the prestigious Leibniz Award and Karl Ziegler Preis. 

He is a member of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften (corresponding member), the Academia Europaea, the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Honorary Member of the Chemical Research Society of India, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.