Laudatio for Professor Helmut Tributsch
Authors: Ellmer Klaus , Fiechter Sebastian 
Published: August 2008

As co‐workers of Professor Helmut Tributsch for a long time at the Helmholtz‐Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (former Hahn‐Meitner‐Institut Berlin), it is both, an honour and an obligation to write a laudatio on the occasion of his 65th birthday. We have experienced him as a deeply‐convinced scientist and visionary, who inspired his students, co‐workers and colleagues with his ideas, his enthusiasm and his enduring energy and scientific productivity.

Helmut Tributsch was born in 1943 in the small mountain village Laglesie San Leopoldo (Leopoldskirchen) in the region of Friuli, which historically belonged to an old, small, German exclave in Italy. After school he studied physics at the Technische Universität Munich, where he also acquired his Ph.D. in 1968 under the supervision of the famous electrochemist Professor Heinz Gerischer, founder of a well‐known scientific school in physical chemistry.

Already in his Ph.D. thesis with the title “Eine elektrochemische Methode zum Studium der spektralen Sensibilisierung und heterogener photochemischer Reaktionen an ZnO‐Elektroden (An Electrochemical Method for Studying the Spectral Sensitization and Heterogeneous Photochemical Reactions at ZnO Electrodes)”, Helmut Tributsch investigated light‐driven reactions at semiconductor electrolyte interfaces, which has been one of his main research fields in the past 40 years. After having finished his Promotion he started out into the “wide world”, both literally and figuratively with respect to his diversity in science and his multilingual abilities. From 1969 to 1971, he was postdoc at the University of Berkeley (USA) and from 1972 to 1973 at the University of Santiago de Chile.

In 1974 he became a scientist at the Fritz‐Haber‐Institut (FHI) in Berlin, where he again joined Professor Heinz Gerischer, who had become the director of this institute in 1970. Before getting a formal academic appointment at the Freie Universität Berlin, connected with a position as a department head at the Hahn‐Meitner‐Institut Berlin, he completed his “trip around the world” as visiting scientist in Okasaki (Japan) and at the CNRS in Paris (France).

In these scientifically very fruitful years, he performed research on the conversion of light into electrical and chemical energy. For instance, he proposed in the 1970s the use of transition metal dichalcogenides (e.g. WS2, WSe2, MoS2, MoSe2) as corrosion‐resistant photo‐anodes and for photoelectrochemical cells.

At the Hahn‐Meitner‐Institut (HMI), which was founded in 1959 as a nuclear research centre, he became the first head of a department for solar energy research. This was a completely new research direction at the HMI and owed to the first oil crisis in the 1970s. At the HMI, Professor Helmut Tributsch intensified his research on new materials for photovoltaics and catalysis by preparing and investigating especially transition metal chalcogenides, for instance RuS2, ReS2 and FeS2 (pyrite). The latter material was selected by Helmut Tributsch not only because of its favourable optical and electronic properties, but also from the viewpoint of the availability of its components in the earth crust, an issue which remains an important topic also in the present energy discussion. Since he knew that one of the scientific challenges in this field is the careful preparation of materials to be investigated, he established, almost immediately, a laboratory for materials preparation to synthesize new inorganic and mostly semiconducting compounds and to grow single crystals, an activity later supported by a thin‐film preparation lab. In order to analyse and to characterize materials and interfaces he not only installed adapted surface analytical tools at the institute, but also initiated the development of new techniques such as the time and space resolved microwave conductivity (TRMC) method and the scanning microscope for semiconductor characterization (SMSC). It was at this time that Professor Tributsch put down on paper his vision of a prospective energy supply of mankind, based on renewable energies, which led to a book with the title “Return to the Sun: Hydrogen, the Energy of the Future” (1982). In the 1980s, some research activities were started in Professor Tributsch's new department, later named “Solar Energetics”, still covering important research areas on the topic of chemically oriented materials research for solar cells and catalyst development. Inspired by an initiative of Professor Tributsch to develop a sunlight driven photocatalytic membrane for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen the department picked up the idea mimicking processes in photosynthesis.

Besides his scientific interests, Helmut Tributsch was a careful observer of nature during his journeys through the world. This led to some popular books, which were published mainly in the 1980s. One of them dealt with the meteorological phenomenon of the Fata Morgana, entitled: “Riddles of the Gods. Fata Morgana”. Another one, with the title “When the Snakes Wake Up”, describes the conspicuous behaviour of animals shortly before an earthquake, an observation that can in principle be used to predict earthquakes.

As a scientist, Professor Tributsch always has an open‐mind, covering a broad scientific field ranging from biology to bionics, from physical chemistry to materials research and even to the principles of nature (time arrow, non‐equilibrium thermodynamics). It has to be emphasized, that Helmut Tributsch, though mainly an experimentalist, also benefited from theoretical support of his research.

During his scientific career, Helmut Tributsch published more than 400 papers and 9 scientific and popular scientific books.

For us as collaborators, it was always a pleasure to discuss scientific questions with Professor Tributsch, as he is a kind person, giving his colleagues and collaborators their own free space of research, being convinced that good ideas can only prosper in an open, collaborative scientific atmosphere.

Of course, not all of his ideas and visions could be realized so far. Some ideas and visions were formulated too early and need time for ripening. As an example, last June, at the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy (which is the new name of the Hahn‐Meitner‐Institut since June, 4th, 2008), the workshop “Solar Fuels” took place, discussing the research needs for photo(electro)chemical generation of hydrogen, coming back to basic ideas which he has advocated for more than 25 years.

Professor Tributsch is one of the most visionary scientists in the field of renewable energies and bionics. We wish him all the best for his future, when he will be back in his homeland Friuli, and are looking forward to discuss further ideas and visions with him, inspired by the “alpine spirit” of Laglesie San Leopoldo!

Berlin, July 24th, 2008