Wolfgang Lubitz, born in 1949 in Berlin, studied chemistry at the Freie Universität – Berlin, where he received his doctoral degree in 1977 and also his habilitation in organic chemistry in 1982. The following year he worked as a Max Kade Fellow at UC - San Diego in the Department of Physics. From 1979 to 1989, Lubitz was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at Freie Universität - Berlin and then from 1989 to 1991, a Professor at Universität Stuttgart in experimental physics/biophysics. From 1991 to 2001 he was a Full Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Max Volmer Institute, Technische Universität Berlin. In 2000 he became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry in Mülheim/Ruhr (later renamed Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry). He is Honorary Professor at the Heinrich Heine Universität - Düsseldorf and currently Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute in Mülheim.
Wolfgang Lubitz has (co)authored more than 300 publications in scientific journals, written over twenty review articles and been a contributor to many books. In the past his group has significantly contributed to the understanding of light-induced charge separation in bacterial and plant photosynthesis by studying the radicals, radical pairs, and triplet states that are created in this process. In recent years, his research focus has been shifted to the investigation of catalytic metal centers in metalloproteins, for example in [NiFe]- and [FeFe]-hydrogenases and the Mn4Ca-cluster in the water splitting complex of photosynthesis. An important aspect of his work is the development and application of advanced EPR methods in different frequency bands, which is supplemented by quantum chemical calculations and other spectroscopic techniques.
Professor Lubitz is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and from 2005-2008 he was President of the International EPR/ESR Society. He is a member of the International EPR/ESR Society (IES), ISMAR and AMPERE Society, the International Photosynthesis Society, and several other professional organizations such as the GDCh and ACS. He is a member of the Council for the Meetings of Nobel Laureates in Lindau and on the editorial board of five journals. Among other awards and fellowships he has recently received are the Zavoisky Award (Russia, 2002), the Bruker Prize (U.K., 2003), the Gold Medal of the International EPR Society (2005) and an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from the University at Uppsala (Sweden, 2008).
