Honour for a “Friend of Muenster”
Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy gives the title of Honorary Doctor to Prof. Dr. Tatsumi
Muenster, 09 May 2011
In a ceremony on Monday May 9 at the Westfalian Wilhelms University (WWU) the Facultyof Chemistry and Pharmacy has honoured the Japanese chemist Prof. Dr. Kazuyuki Tatsumi(Nagoya University) by electing him as Honorary Doctor. Prof. Dr. Jan Andersson, Faculty
Dean for Education, presented the Citation Document. The Ceremony took place as part of ascientific colloquium of the German-Japanese “International Research Training Group”(IRTG) Muenster-Nagoya.
After an introduction by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Erker, Speaker of the IRTG Muenster-Nagoya,
Prof. em. Dr. Bernt Krebs (Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry of the WWU)
presented the Laudatio. He pointed out that Kazuyuki Tatsumi is honoured as one of the“leading scientists of Japan”. In addition, he said that the Japanese chemist is internationally
outstanding and, what is most important, “a friend of Germany and Muenster”. He continued
that, as a fortunate coincidence there is a second great honour for Kazuyuki Tatsumi: Still inthis month he will receive in Berlin together with Gerhard Erker the Eugen and Ilse Seibold
Award by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The Laureates will be honoured “asoutstanding communicators between Japan and Germany and as sustainable supporters ofscience”.
Some years ago Kazuyuki Tatsumi has, together with Gerhard Erker (Professor at the Instituteof Organic Chemistry at the WWU), successfully initiated the IRTG Muenster-Nagoya. This
was the first German-Japanese Graduate College, financed by the DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft and its Japanese counterpart, the Japan Society for the Promotion ofScience. Within this extensive PhD student exchange program as part of the IRTG “Complex
Chemical Systems: Design, Development and Applications” very successful cooperations
between scientists of the Universities in Muenster and Nagoya have developed. Among theparticipating scientists is also the Nobel laureate Prof. Ryoji Noyori.
With the award of the Honorary Doctor the Faculty has acknowledged the internationally
outstanding achievements of Kazuyuki Tatsumi in the field of organometallic chemistry andin the understanding of the role of metals in biological systems. In these fields of research theJapanese scientist has published an especially large number of groundbreaking publications.
In addition, the longstanding successful activities of Kazuyuki Tatsumi for the improvementof international scientific relations are acknowledged. In this framework he has set new
standards in the cooperation between Japanese and German Research Institutions.
As the laudator pointed out further, Professor Tatsumi (born 1949), besides his successful
work as Director of the internationally leading Research Center for Materials Science at
Nagoya University, has gained international acknowledgement for his outstanding activities ingeneral science policy. At present he is Vice President and for 2012 he is President-Elect ofthe International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the World Top Organization of all
National Chemical Societies.

Legends to the Photographs:

Left:
Vicedean Prof. Dr. Jan Andersson, Prof. Dr. Kazuyuki Tatsumi, Prof. Dr. Jun Okuda (RhineWestfalian Technical University Aachen), Prof. Dr. Bernt Krebs, Melanie Rauschenberg(PhD student) , Ines Ferse (PhD student), and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Erker (from left to right)
Right:
Vicedean Prof. Dr. Jan Andersson (left) presented the Honorary Doctor Document of theFaculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy to Prof. Dr. Kazuyuki Tatsumi.