Claudia Felser receives the Wilhelm Ostwald Medal

Overview

Claudia Felser, who has been Director at the Dresden Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids since 2011, will be awarded the Wilhelm Ostwald Medal in recognition of her outstanding scientific achievements at the Public Spring Session of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig on 8 April 2022. She is one of the 25 principal investigators of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat – Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter.

Wilhelm Ostwald researched and taught interdisciplinarily between chemistry and physics at the University of Leipzig from 1887 to 1922 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis as well as his studies on equilibrium conditions and reaction rates.

In the spirit of Wilhelm Ostwald, Claudia Felser researches at the boundary between chemistry and physics – in solid-state chemistry. She is internationally known for her work on Heusler compounds and on new topological quantum materials. But she also has her eye on potential applications, from new hard magnets and spintronic materials to topologically stable surface states of solids for catalysis.