Fritz Haber Institute as an International Center for Surface Science

Fritz Haber Institute as an International Center for Surface Science 

Simultaneous with Bradshaw s efforts, other significant changes were taking place at the institute that would transform it into an international hub of surface science. Deliberations about creating the institute s own theory department were already a part of the 1980 restructuring effort. The idea was to strengthen the PHI in the area of theory at the level of an Institute Director. A lengthy search identified Matthias Scheffler as a candidate for the directorship, and the MPG Senate called Scheffler to became Scientific Member and Director of the Theory Department on 1 July 1988. Another crucial facility for the PHI has been the Joint Network 

Center, created in 1987. Its forerunner, the old computer center, led by Jurgen Ktihn, was incorporated into this new center, and the workhorse of the old center, the Digital Equipment Corporation s DECSYSTEM-2020 computer, was passed on to the MPI for Cell Biology in Ladenburg. The Joint Network Center has served all of the Berlin MPIs ever since. 

Ertl was appointed Scientific Member of the MPG and Director at the FHI as of 1 April 1985. Rather than taking over from Gerischer, he shared in directing the Physical Chemistry Department for the next two years with Gerischer, commuting between Berlin and Munich, to which he was still bound by previous commitments. The smooth transition from Gerischer to Ertl was completed with Gerischer s retirement on 1 April 1987, at which point Ertl became the sole director of the Department 

The year 1986 at the Institute was shaped by two events. On 15 October 1986, the news arrived from Stockholm that Ernst Ruska had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope. Ruska shared the prize with the inventors of the scanning 

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