The 1999 Grammaticakis-Neumann
Prize in photochemistry was awarded to Dr. Werner Nau from the University
of Basel and Dr. Eric Vauthey from the University of Fribourg. The award
ceremony took place at the University of Fribourg on February 26, 2000.
It constituted a highlight of the EPA Graduate Student Symposium organized
during the whole week by Prof. Thomas Bally.
The lectures presented by the two awardees were both models of excellent
scientific standard and didactic clarity. They have been published in
the November 2000 issue of the EPA Newsletter.
Werner Nau (left)
and Eric Vauthey (right) receiving the 1999 Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize
Werner Nau
Of German origin, Werner Nau was born in 1968. Starting in 1987, he studied Chemistry at the University of Würzburg. He then moved to Canada, where he obtained in 1991 a M.Sc. degree from the St Francis Xavier University. Returning to Germany, Werner Nau began a doctoral thesis at the University of Würzburg under the supervision of Prof. Waldemar Adam. He got his Ph.D. degree in 1994 and moved to Canada once more to undertake a postdoc with Prof. Tito Scaiano at the University of Ottawa.
From 1996 to 2002, Werner Nau was at the University of Basel, where he received his habilitation and a prestigious 'Profile' fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He has now a professorship at the International University of Bremen where he is leading a research group active in the field of organic photochemistry.
"The Grammaticakis-Neuman Prize 1999 is awarded to Dr. Werner Nau for an outstanding scientific contribution in the study of the photochemistry and photophysics of the n, p* excited states".
Eric Vauthey was the first Swiss scientist to receive the Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize. He was born in 1961 and, starting in 1981, studied chemistry at the University of Fribourg. He obtained in 1985 his diploma and began a Ph.D. thesis in physical chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Edwin Haselbach and Prof. Paul Suppan. After having received his doctorate in 1989, he left to London to do a postdoc with Prof. David Phillips at the Davy-Faraday Laboratory and then at Imperial College. Returning to Switzerland in 1990, Eric Vauthey joined the group of Prof. Urs Wild at the ETH in Zürich. From 1992 to 2001, he was back in Fribourg where he got his habilitation in 1998. Since 2001 he is leading a research group in molecular photodynamics at the University of Geneva.
"The Grammaticakis-Neuman Prize 1999 is awarded to Dr. Eric Vauthey for an outstanding scientific contribution to the development of the technique of time-resolved holography and its application to the study of the dynamics of ultrafast photo-induced processes".
