Lieben Prize

Robert s dissertation advisers were both good friends of Albert Einstein Hans Thirring, whose Lense-Thirring equation had provided a method for testing Einstein s special theory of relativity, and Felix Ehrenhaft, who had provided support for Einstein s theory of Brownian motion by making observations of the movement of silver particles in air (which brought him the Lieben Prize of the Vienna Academy of Sciences). For his postdoctoral research topic Robert approached Thirring, chair of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, who directed him to Herman Mark in the First Chemical Laboratory of the University of Vienna. 

Several articles discussed achievements of Austrian chemists, often in connection with obituaries or when a chemist was awarded the Lieben Prize. One of the obituaries was for the chemist Adolf Lieben, who had initiated the Ignaz Lieben Preis in 1863 from money inherited from his father Ignaz Lieben. It was at that time a completely new idea to award a prize for excellence in science. The Lieben Foundation was controlled by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. OCHZ always reported on the sessions of the mathematical-scientific class of the academy and also on the winners of the Lieben Prize. For example OCHZ reported on the Lieben Prize for Rudolf Wegscheider, professor at the University of Vienna and president of VOCH since 1905, and Hans Meyer, professor at the University of Prague, who later died in the concentration camp Theresienstadt in 1942. Wegscheider had published papers on the esterification of various adds and Meyer about the use of thionyl chloride in organic synthesis. 

On another occasion we find a notice about the planned closing of the chemistry section of the Technologisches Gewerbemuseum (TGM), where at that time Paul Friedlaender was doing research into dye chemistry as head of the chemistry section. Friedlaender, who was also on the editorial board of OCHZ, was awarded the Lieben Prize in 1909 for his work on the antique purple and left Vienna in 1911 for Darmstadt when the chemistry section of TGM was finally closed and a new chemistry school without research was opened instead." ... 

Biographies of all Lieben Prize winners have been collected by Werner Soukup. See Soukup (2004). 

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See also in sourсe #XX -- [ ]

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