Honorary award for GDNÄ Vice President
Alwin Mittasch Prize 2025 goes to Ferdi Schüth
Professor Ferdi Schüth, Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr, is to receive the Alwin Mittasch Prize 2025 for his outstanding work in catalysis research. The German Catalysis Society (GeCatS) is honouring his work as a creative initiator and driving force behind new catalysis concepts, as well as a pioneer in transfer of new findings in catalysis research into commercial applications. Ferdi Schüth is currently vice president of the GDNÄ; in 2027 he will take over the presidency.
The Alwin Mittasch Prize is awarded for outstanding research work that has led to a deeper understanding or an expansion of the fundamentals of catalysis and its industrial application. The prize, endowed with 10,000 euros, is supported by BASF. The award ceremony will take place on 13 March 2025 during the Annual Meeting of German Catalysis Scientists in Weimar.
Ferdi Schüth is an internationally outstanding chemist working in the field of heterogeneous catalysis, in particular in the field of catalysis materials. His work laid the foundation for many groundbreaking discoveries, such as nanostructured catalysts with controlled porosity and targeted placement of functional units for various applications. In the field of mechanocatalysis of gas-phase reactions, Ferdi Schüth was able to synthesise ammonia at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. He was also one of the pioneers of high-throughput experimentation (HTE) using modern methods, which led to the founding of hte GmbH in 1999. In a sense, this was a continuation of the research of Alwin Mittasch, who used “manual” high-throughput approaches to conduct thousands of experiments with various solids.
Paul Alwin Mittasch (1869-1953) was a German chemist and historian of science of Sorbian origin. He gained great recognition for his pioneering and systematic research into the development of catalysts for ammonia synthesis using the Haber-Bosch process. The prize named after him has been awarded since 1990.
The German Catalysis Society (GeCatS) is the platform for the entire German catalysis community in the field of research and application. It has around a thousand members from industry and academic institutions. GeCatS promotes the exchange between industry, universities, research institutions and research policy organisations and represents the interests of the catalysis community at national and international level.

© Frank Vinken für MPI für Kohlenforschung
Professor Dr. Ferdi Schüth
Ferdi Schüth studied chemistry and law in Münster and earned his doctorate in chemistry. He was a postdoc at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Minneapolis in the USA and completed his habilitation in inorganic chemistry in Mainz in 1995. In 1995 he was appointed to a chair in inorganic chemistry in Frankfurt and in 1998 was appointed Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim. Schüth has been an honorary professor at Ruhr University Bochum since 1999. He was Vice President of the Max Planck Society from 2014 to 2020.