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A Moment of Reflection: Sixty Years After the Nobel Prize for Hermann Staudinger

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Hierarchical Macromolecular Structures: 60 Years after the Staudinger Nobel Prize I

Part of the book series: Advances in Polymer Science ((POLYMER,volume 261))

Abstract

The timing of the award of the Nobel Prize for Hermann Staudinger in 1953 was indeed late, but it could not have been chosen better to honour the already blossoming sciences surrounding synthetic as well as biological macromolecules. A director could not have set the scene more perfectly for a historical event: Staudinger received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry at the same time as Hans Krebs and Fritz A. Lipman were able to accept the awards for Medicine.

Attempts to echo and reflect science cannot mean to look only at precise results of research, cannot mean to establish the factual truth alone. We have to try to look behind the curtain of science, look at the acting scientists and the life they had to live and play in. And we have to try to describe what happened since and even tackle predicting the future – at least a little bit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Organic Chemistry, University Mainz, Duesbergweg 10-14, 55099, Mainz, Germany

    Helmut Ringsdorf

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  1. Helmut Ringsdorf
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Correspondence to Helmut Ringsdorf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Virgil Percec

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Ringsdorf, H. (2013). A Moment of Reflection: Sixty Years After the Nobel Prize for Hermann Staudinger. In: Percec, V. (eds) Hierarchical Macromolecular Structures: 60 Years after the Staudinger Nobel Prize I. Advances in Polymer Science, vol 261. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/12_2013_263

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