Professor Wolfgang F. Lindner: The 2009 Martin Gold Medal Winner

Professor Wolfgang F. Lindner from the Department of Analytical Chemistry and Food Chemistry at the University of Vienna, Austria, has been awarded the Martin Gold Medal for his internationally recognised work in the area of chromatographic stereo selective separation techniques.

Professor Lindner who was a previous recipient of the Societies Jubilee Medal and is one of the pioneers in this field and greatly contributed to the dissemination of the technique around the world, making it the most popular method for the analysis of chiral compounds in biological media or those produced synthetically.

He first became involved in chromatography during his PhD studies at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz looking at the gas chromatographic analysis of toxins in tobacco smoke. In 1972 he accepted an assistant professor position at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Graz, rising through the ranks to associate professor in 1982. During these years, he worked as scientist-on-leave in a number of industrial and academic laboratories -1973 and 1975 in the group of Prof. R. W. Frei at Sandoz, Basel; 1978–1979 as a Max Kade post doctoral fellow in the group of Prof. B. L. Karger at Northeastern University, Boston, USA; and 1986–1987 as an invited international chemist with Dr. F. Robey at the FDA, Bethesda, USA to explore new research perspectives.

In 1996, he received and accepted the call to the prestigious chair of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Vienna, as successor of the late Prof. J. F. K. Huber.

He is now part of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Molecular Recognition Materials at the Universities Department of Analytical Chemistry and Food Chemistry.

In the past 20 years Professor Lindner with his interest in molecular recognition has pioneered work on steroselective techniques and can be considered as the founder of such technologies with his ground breaking work on synthesis and mechanical understanding of anion and cation exchange chiral phases for chromatographic separations.

This has led to the commercial development of such phases for enantiomeric separations, to new generations of hybrid-type reversed phase media for peptide and shape-selective separation of aromatic hydrocarbons; affinity chromatography media for the preparative purification of monoclonal antibodies; intelligent molecular imprints for the extraction of mycotoxins from biological matrices; highly selective membrane materials for the separation of chiral compounds and biomolecules; chiral carriers for the countercurrent chromatographic and extractive separation of enantiomers.

Professor Lindner’s work has done much to advance the development on new analysis and separation concepts for applications in life sciences pharmaceutical research, biotechnology and natural product isolation and is a worthy recipient of the Martin Medal.