Michael Hanack

Georg Michael Hanack is Professor emeritus of Chemistry at the Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen (Germany).

He was born in Luckenwalde on October 22, 1931. From 1949/50 to 1954 he studied Chemistry, Philosophy and Economics at the universities of Freiburg, Bonn and Tuebingen and obtained his Diplomchemiker degree in 1954. He worked for his Doktorarbeit under supervision of Professor Walter Hückel and finished his thesis in 1957 with a work titled "Solvolyse der Toluolsulfonate der stereoisomeren cis-alpha-Hydrindanole und Beiträge zur Messmethodik" (Solvolysis of toluenesulfonates of stereoisomeric cis-alpha-hydrindanoles and contributions to the methodology of kinetic measurements).

After his assistantship to Walter Hückel from 1957 to 1958, he conducted his own research on topics such as Organofluorine chemistry, Organic Chemistry and Stereochemistry. After his Habilitation in 1961 he was granted the title Privatdozent when he was only 31 years old, at that time one of the youngest Privatdozenten in Germany. He was promoted to Professor extraordinarius at University of Tuebingen in 1968 and was offered the chair as full professor of Organic Chemistry and head of the department in Saarbrücken, Germany in 1970. In April 1975 he returned to the University of Tübingen as full professor of Organic Chemistry (successor of Prof. Eugen Müller). At the University of Tuebingen, Hanack was also dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy from 1981 to 1983, and head of the Department of Chemistry from 1995 to 2001. Since 2001 he is Professor emeritus and is still continuing his research work.

• organic fluorine compounds, perfluorinated pyrethroids
• stereochemistry, conformational analysis
• organic reaction mechanisms, chemistry of vinyl and phenyl cations
• synthesis of macroheterocyclic transition metal complexes (such as phthalocyanines) as intrinsic organic conductors (“shish-kebab“ polymers)
• compounds with magnetic and non-linear optical properties

• Fluorverbindungen der Terpenreihe: Reaktionen des Fluorwasserstoffs mit Doppelbindungen und Dreiringen; Hanack, Michael. - Tübingen, 1962
• Conformation Theory; Hanack, Michael. - New York : Academic Press, 1965 (ISBN 978-0-12-322550-4)
• Stang, P.J.; Rappoport, Z.; Hanack, H.; Subramanian,L.R.; Vinyl Cations, AcademicPress, NY, 1979 (ISBN 978-0-12-663780-9) online at Elsevier
• Science and Technology of Synthetic Metals: Michael Hanack, Siegmar Roth, Hermann Schier; 1991
• Literature list at ResearchGate

In his function as Doktorvater, he had more than 230 doctoral students in addition to many postdoctoral students and guest researchers who studied in his laboratory.

• 1982-2003 Editorial Board of Houben-Weyl Methods of Organic Chemistry (Thieme Medical Publishers)
• 1985-1998 Editorial Advisory Board of Synthesis (journal) (Thieme Medical Publishers)
• 1999-2008 Honorary Advisory Board of Synthesis (journal) (Thieme Medical Publishers)
• 2004-2008 Editorial Board of Synthetic Metals (Elsevier)
• since 1997 Editorial Board of Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines (John Wiley & Sons, World Scientific)