Web of Science: Rolf Huisgen is Citation Laureate
Once a year, US media company Clarivate (Web of Science) awards Scientists who have the potential to be candidates for the Nobel Prize or other high caliber scientific prices due to the frequent citations of their scientific papers in prestigious scientific publications.
The current ranking selected the today 99-year-old Rolf Huisgen, who was the most cited German scientist, especially from 1961 to 1976. Many of his scientific findings are now part of the standard knowledge of organic chemistry, which is taught in the relevant textbooks. The scientific work of the renowned chemist is particularly distinguished by the principle of 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions he has identified. The Huisgen cycloaddition named after him forms the key building block of many syntheses. His works have enabled and opened up completely new areas in the life and material sciences. The use of Huisgen-Click reactions, especially in biochemistry and bioorganic chemistry, has led to an enormous increase in order to introduce specific functions and modifications into protein, carbohydrate or DNA molecules.
Rolf Huisgen was born in 1920 in Gerolstein, Eifel. He studied chemistry in Bonn and Munich and was awarded a doctorate in 1943 with contributions to the knowledge of the Strychnos alkaloid Vomicin at Nobel laureate Professor Heinrich Wieland at LMU. Huisgen habilitated there in 1947. In 1949, he went as an associate professor to the University of Tübingen before he returned in 1952 as successor to his teacher Heinrich Wieland to the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the LMU. He held this chair until his retirement in 1988.
Professor Rolf Huisgen has received numerous awards for his scientific achievements. These include the Liebig Medal, awarded by the Gesellschaft deutscher Chemiker, the Roger Adams Award of the American Chemical Society, the Otto Hahn Prize for Chemistry and Physics, the "Bayerische Verdienstorden" or the "Bayerische Maximiliansorden für Wissenschaft und Kunst". In addition, Rolf Huisgen is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and many foreign academies and has received honorary doctorates from, among others, the Universities of Madrid, Freiburg, the Free University Berlin and the State Technological Institute Saint Petersburg.