High honour for Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus

The physical chemist and GDNÄ group chair was awarded honorary membership of the Bunsen Society

At the annual meeting of the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry, the 2026 Bunsen Conference in Dresden, Senior Professor Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus was awarded honorary membership in recognition of her services to the society. As Professor Melanie Schnell (DESY Hamburg and University of Kiel) emphasised in her laudatory speech, Kohse-Höinghaus is the first woman among the 58 honorary members to date in more than 130 years. The Bunsen Conference 2026 took place from 30 March to 1 April on the theme of ‘Properties and Processes under Confinement’.

Ceremonial presentation: The President of the German Bunsen Society, Professor Robert Franke, presents Professor Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus with the honorary membership certificate.

According to the Society’s website, honorary membership has been awarded since 1894 for “pioneering, successful work of national and international distinction, for outstanding pioneers of physical-chemical science and technology, and in recognition of special services to the intellectual and material advancement of physical chemistry”. Renowned and influential scientists in physics and chemistry have been honoured in this way, including Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, Svante Arrhenius, Max Planck, Walther Nernst and Otto Hahn, as well as, more recently, Manfred Eigen, Gerhard Ertl and Stefan Hell.

Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus has been associated with the Bunsen Society in a prominent role for many years. Of particular note are her presidency in 2007 and 2008 (also as the first and so far only woman), her co-organisation of the Bunsen Conference in Bielefeld in 2010, the presentation of the Society’s Wilhelm Jost Memorial Lecture in conjunction with the Lower Saxony Academy in Göttingen in 2012, and her award of the Walther Nernst Commemorative Medal in 2020.

Honorary membership was conferred for the first time on 30 March, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen’s birthday. “I am delighted to have received this honour 50 years after my first attendance at a Bunsen Conference in 1976, when I was still a doctoral student,” says Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus.

Prof. Dr. Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus.

About the person

Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus is a senior professor of physical chemistry at Bielefeld University. The 74-year-old is internationally renowned for her work on the diagnosis of combustion processes using laser spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. From 1994 to 2017, she held a chair in Physical Chemistry at Bielefeld University. Prior to this, Kohse-Höinghaus conducted research at various institutions in Germany and abroad; in 1992, she obtained her habilitation with a thesis on energy technology at the University of Stuttgart. On the initiative of Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus, one of the first German hands-on laboratories, teutolab, was founded in 2000. There are now satellite laboratories in the Bielefeld region, across Europe and in Asia. The internationally renowned scientist is a member of several academies, including the Leopoldina and acatech, as well as numerous committees and scientific institutions in Germany and abroad. She has received many awards, including the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon, as well as honorary and visiting professorships in several countries. In 2007, she became the first woman to be elected President of the German Bunsen Society. Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus was the first European to serve as President of the International Combustion Institute from 2012 to 2016. She has been a member of the GDNÄ for many years and is one of the key contributors to the scientific conference programmes in the field of engineering sciences. At the 2026 GDNÄ Conference in Bremen, she will serve as group chair for the field of engineering sciences.