Editorial

Abstract

Wolfgang Beck was born, together with his twin brother Reinhard, in Munich on May 5, 1932. As a student in Gymnasium his interests included soccer, skiing, tennis, music and, of course, chemistry. Now, at eighty, Prof. Beck is in very good shape, both physically and mentally. He plays an excellent weekly game of tennis, plays his electronic organ and pays regular visits to concerts and the theater. After finishing Gymnasium in 1952, he began studying chemistry at the Technische Hochschule München (now the Technische Universität München) under such academic luminaries as Hieber, Goldschmidt, Schiebe and Patat. After becoming a Diplomchemiker in 1957, he joined Walter Hieber's group and earned his Ph.D. in 1959. His thesis was entitled “On the structure of some metal carbonyl and nitrosyl compounds” and dealt with nitrosylhalides of iron and cobalt, and X-bridged dimers of the type [}Fe(ν- X)(CO)3}2] (X1S, Se, SR, SeR). Prof. Beck became a specialist in IR spectroscopy as an analytic tool for transition- metal complexes of pseudohalides (fulminate, azide) and started his independent research for his Habilitation on fulminate metal complexes (1963). Some highlights of his early research were the determination of the structure of fulminic acid H-CNO by IR, the improvement of the stability of anionic azide complexes by using large cations and the cycloaddition reactions of azide ligands in metal complexes (under very mild conditions). His successes were crowned in 1968 when he became Full Professor of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. There he initiated and developed several promising areas of research which are still highly relevant today: – Metal complexes of dyes (such as indigo) and stable radicals – Reactions of metal carbonyls with thiiranes and aziridines – Metal complexes of biologically important ligands (amino acids, peptides, sugars, steroids, nucleobases) and the anti-tumor activity of platinum complexes: pioneering work in the field of bioorganiometallic chemistry – Metal-mediated formation of peptides – Strong organometallic Lewis acids: metal complexes with weakly coordinating anions – Directed synthesis of hydrocarbon-bridged metal complexes Prof. Beck has guided around one-hundred-and-fifty coworkers and the results of their work have been published in more than six-hundred-and-fifty papers and several reviews. His success and high regard in the world of science have been honored with guest professorships such as one at the University of Wisconsin in 1977, offers of professorships at the universities at Marburg (1967) and Hamburg (1977) and by many awards such as the Karl-Winnacker Stipendium (1966), the Chemistry Award by the Academy of Science, Göttingen (1967), the Liebig Denkmünze of the German Chemical Society (1994), the Lavoisier Medal for Bioinorganic Chemistry (2002) and last, but not least, an honorary doctorate from the Technische Universität München (2011). He has been a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals and a referee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, 1981-1992). In addition to his research activities, Wolfgang Beck was engaged in academic administration as Director of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Dean of the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, and was a member of the LMU Senate. Wolfgang Beck has always enjoyed giving seminars and lectures, a pleasure shared by his students. Especially popular was his introductory experimental lecture in chemistry for first-year students, a lecture sometimes accompanied by Beck's beer... Although we regret his decision to retire in 2000, Wolfgang Beck continues to be active. He can be found in his office almost every day and publishes from ten to fifteen papers annually, a number that can be favorably compared to those of his non-retired colleagues. His last review, on the formation of peptides within the coordination sphere of metal ions appeared in the Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem. 2011, 637, 1647-1672. Now, in 2012, Wolfgang Beck claims that he is running out of material to work on. Nevertheless, he is sometimes seen in one of the labs trying to produce single crystals of compounds that were not fully characterized in the past. Thus, together with his colleagues Professors Evers and Klapötke, he was recently able to solve the structure of the historically interesting “Knallquecksilber”, a result which was met with public interest. Beck's latest project is writing the history of chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität from 1930 to 2000. For that, and for his constant personal engagement, the whole “chemistry family” wishes him good fortune and a long and healthy life. Prof. Dr. Ingo-Peter Lorenz LMU Munich, Germany