Chemical synthesis is like cooking: the approach is empirical, and not all recipes work out. You combine A and B, heat up and stir. If the ingredients (the molecules) harmonize, the desired product C results. But often, something completely different is created. Long before precise knowledge of the composition and properties of atoms and molecules was available, chemists created new substances. Without knowing what happens when two different molecules combine. But how does a chemical bond really come about? Physical chemist Hans Jakob Wörner of the ETH Zurich can observe this with the ultrafast spectroscopic methods that he developed. He observes – in real time – the ingredients, which are composed of rather slow atomic nuclei and the ultrafast electrons, and finally brings insight in the black box that chemical reactions still are.

For this accomplishment, Hans Jakob Wörner will be honored with this year’s Klung-Wilhelmy Science Prize on November 6. The 75’000 Euro prize, which is alternately awarded to chemists and physicists, belong to the highest value, privately financed prizes for German junior researchers. The jury honors in particular his “pioneering work on the movement of electrons in the sub-femtosecond timescale”. This includes for example experiments using the so-called high-harmonics spectroscopy.

For more information: please consult the links below (Press release in German)