On the occasion of Professor Werner Engewald’s 70th birthday

Abstract

In this issue of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry you will find a tribute to Professor Emeritus Werner Engewald on the occasion of his 70th birthday. I got to know Werner Engewald when I was a student at the University of Leipzig attending my first lectures on separation science. He has been a mentor and advisor ever since and it is my great honor and pleasure to start this issue with a few reflections on his work and vitae. Werner was born in Glauchau, a small town in Saxony, Germany, in August 1937. He studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig from 1957 to 1962 and obtained his Ph.D. in 1968. In the same year, he attended an international symposium on chromatography in Berlin, and I believe it was back then that he discovered his passion for the separation sciences. After postdoctoral studies in 1971 under A.V. Kislev at the Moscow State University he returned to Leipzig and obtained his habilitation in 1978. In 1979 he was appointed assistant professor in analytical chemistry, and later became a full professor. His scientific interests cover a broad range, including structure–retention relationships in gas chromatography, chromatographic multicomponent analysis, environmental trace analysis, and various sample preparation techniques. He is also interested in hyphenated techniques, such as GC–MS and GC–AED, adsorptive enrichment in combination with thermal desorption, pyrolysis GC, and more recently LC–MS techniques. Werner has mentored more than 35 Ph.D. students, and he is still in contact with many of them. He has published over 200 articles, reviews, and book chapters. Besides the challenging task of running a research group, Werner has always set time aside for professional activities such as serving as departmental head. Werner is also an active member of the separation science working group in the analytical chemistry division of the German Chemical Society; he has served as chairman of the working group and is still a board member of the analytical chemistry division of the German Chemical Society. Over the years he has participated on the editorial boards of several journals, including Fresenius’ Journal of Analytical Chemistry, and reviewed countless manuscripts. In cooperation with the German Chemical Society, he has organized many well-known training courses in gas Anal Bioanal Chem (2007) 388:1631–1632 DOI 10.1007/s00216-007-1380-2