In 1965, Hans-Joachim Cantow, at that time a young industrial chemist at
Chemische Werke Hu ¨ls (now Evonik) who had just completed his habilitation at the
University of Mainz, took the new chair of physical chemistry of macromolecules.
Since then, the Institute has had two directors. Going beyond the traditional polymer
characterization methods, Hans-Joachim Cantow introduced supraconductive nuclear
magnetic resonance spectroscopy, pyrolysis–gas chromatography, thermodynamic
approaches, rheology, element-specific transmission electron microscopy, environmental scanning microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and atomic force
Fig. 7 The Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry (left), the Freiburg Materials Research Center,
FMF (center) and the new Freiburg Institute for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies (FIT), which is currently under construction
J. Rühe
T. Speck
R. Mülhaupt
P. Shastri
H. Finkelmann
IMTEK
Botany
since 1989
since 2010
1984-2010
G. Wegner
1974-1984
G. Reiter
Physics
G. Strobl
H.-J. Cantow
Physics
1965-1992
A. Blumen
Elfriede Husemann
Hermann & Magda
1956- 1974
Staudinger
1926-1956
Fig. 6 The research directors of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry and their partners in
physics, microsystems engineering (IMTEK) and the Freiburg Botanic Garden
Hermann Staudinger and Polymer Research in Freiburg
33