faculty member and continued to go back to Hermann Staudinger Haus at least once
a year, several times as visiting professor and many times accompanied by some of
my graduate students. One day after we returned to the USA, one of my graduate
students, Brian Auman now at the Experimental Station of DuPont, asked me to let
him spend one extra year in Freiburg, as I promised all of them. When he returned to
the USA after the extra year in Freiburg, with the young secretary of Cantow as his
wife, I thought that this was the end of my visits to Hermann Staudinger Haus. But,
my visits to the Haus in Freiburg continue even today. In 2012, I gave the opening
lecture at the Makromolekulare Kolloquium in Freiburg. I checked the new lecture
room the evening before. More than 1,000 people could be accommodated in this
lecture room. On the morning of my lecture there was not a single empty sit, even
for me, and many people were standing up. Cantow, Ringsdorf, and the current
directors were in the first row. In 2013, I lectured during the 90th Anniversary of
Cantow in the same full lecture room. I wished Hermann and Magda Staudinger
could have seen the more than 1,000 people in the audience of their Kolloquium.
Their Haus has educated many generations of scientists, shaped their lives, and
continues to do so on a much larger scale than when they knew it.With one
exception, I never could turn down a request from the scientists of the Staudinger
scientific family. About 10 years after I came to the USA, Hermann F. Mark called
my office and asked me to become an Editor of the Journal of Polymer Science:
Part A: Polymer Chemistry, which he founded in 1946. I answered as politely as I
could that I felt I was too young to invest my time in editorial work. He did not
object. Quite a number of years later, David Tirrell called and asked me again to be
Editor. I debated with him the same way as with Hermann F. Mark but ultimately he
convinced me. His argument was: “You will learn more about the life of scientists
than in any other way!” When Tobias Wassermann from Springer invited me to be
the Editor of this special issue of Advances in Polymer Science dedicated to the 60th
Anniversary of the Nobel Prize of Hermann Staudinger, my first reaction was to
turn it down because it takes a lot of time to convince the “right people” to write a
brief review or story. However, I remembered David Tirrell’s advice and everything Hermann Staudinger Haus had done for many of us. David was one of the first
to accept my invitation to write for this issue.
2 What Did Hermann Staudinger Do Conceptually New for
Organic Chemistry?
Hermann Staudinger was a highly regarded organic chemist who contributed
substantially to the field of traditional organic chemistry. From the discovery of
ketenes [1] to the elaboration of the “Staudinger reaction” or “Staudinger reduction” of azides with phosphines [2], his high organic chemistry credibility was
From Synthetic Macromolecules to Biological-Like Complex Systems
177
a year, several times as visiting professor and many times accompanied by some of
my graduate students. One day after we returned to the USA, one of my graduate
students, Brian Auman now at the Experimental Station of DuPont, asked me to let
him spend one extra year in Freiburg, as I promised all of them. When he returned to
the USA after the extra year in Freiburg, with the young secretary of Cantow as his
wife, I thought that this was the end of my visits to Hermann Staudinger Haus. But,
my visits to the Haus in Freiburg continue even today. In 2012, I gave the opening
lecture at the Makromolekulare Kolloquium in Freiburg. I checked the new lecture
room the evening before. More than 1,000 people could be accommodated in this
lecture room. On the morning of my lecture there was not a single empty sit, even
for me, and many people were standing up. Cantow, Ringsdorf, and the current
directors were in the first row. In 2013, I lectured during the 90th Anniversary of
Cantow in the same full lecture room. I wished Hermann and Magda Staudinger
could have seen the more than 1,000 people in the audience of their Kolloquium.
Their Haus has educated many generations of scientists, shaped their lives, and
continues to do so on a much larger scale than when they knew it.With one
exception, I never could turn down a request from the scientists of the Staudinger
scientific family. About 10 years after I came to the USA, Hermann F. Mark called
my office and asked me to become an Editor of the Journal of Polymer Science:
Part A: Polymer Chemistry, which he founded in 1946. I answered as politely as I
could that I felt I was too young to invest my time in editorial work. He did not
object. Quite a number of years later, David Tirrell called and asked me again to be
Editor. I debated with him the same way as with Hermann F. Mark but ultimately he
convinced me. His argument was: “You will learn more about the life of scientists
than in any other way!” When Tobias Wassermann from Springer invited me to be
the Editor of this special issue of Advances in Polymer Science dedicated to the 60th
Anniversary of the Nobel Prize of Hermann Staudinger, my first reaction was to
turn it down because it takes a lot of time to convince the “right people” to write a
brief review or story. However, I remembered David Tirrell’s advice and everything Hermann Staudinger Haus had done for many of us. David was one of the first
to accept my invitation to write for this issue.
2 What Did Hermann Staudinger Do Conceptually New for
Organic Chemistry?
Hermann Staudinger was a highly regarded organic chemist who contributed
substantially to the field of traditional organic chemistry. From the discovery of
ketenes [1] to the elaboration of the “Staudinger reaction” or “Staudinger reduction” of azides with phosphines [2], his high organic chemistry credibility was
From Synthetic Macromolecules to Biological-Like Complex Systems
177