van ’t Hoff Prize winner Melanie Schnell (DESY/CAU Kiel) with the certificate and the silver medal, designed and handcrafted by goldsmith Martina Tornow. (Photo: DBG).
The German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry (DBG) has awarded Melanie Schnell the van ’t Hoff Prize. The physical chemist is being honoured for her outstanding experimental contributions to the characterisation and control of chiral molecules using chirality-sensitive microwave spectroscopy. Melanie Schnell heads the ‚Spectroscopy of Molecular Processes‘ group at DESY and is a professor of physical chemistry at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel.
In the laudatory speech delivered by Gerard Meijer from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, the significance of the research conducted by her and her group was highlighted: “Melanie Schnell has made seminal contributions to physical chemistry, among which her numerous studies employing microwave radiation stand out. (… ) Melanie Schnell has consistently pushed the limits of this method, making rotational spectroscopy applicable to ever-larger molecules, investigating the interplay between molecular structure and function. (…) The highly original approach to chirality-sensitive microwave spectroscopy that she co-developed has triggered a plethora of activities in research groups worldwide. All the above makes Melanie Schnell a most worthy recipient of this year’s van ‘t Hoff-Prize of the Bunsen-Gesellschaft.”
The van ’t Hoff Prize, donated by the Nobel laureate Gerhard Ertl, has been awarded every three years since 2009 by the DBG to outstanding, active researchers in physical chemistry in memory of Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff, the first Nobel laureate in Chemistry. The prize is endowed with 5000 Euros, a silver medal as well as a certificate.
Melanie Schnell is the first female scientist honoured with the van ’t Hoff Prize which was awarded during the Bunsen Conference in Dresden on 30 March 2026.
Further information: DBG webpage
