Professor Ernst Bayer (1927-2002)

     Professor Ernst Bayer was born in 1927 in Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Germany, so his adolescence was marked by the difficult experience of World War II. In the years 1947 to 1952 he studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg where, in 1952, he was granted his MSc. His PhD studies were performed at the University of Freiberg, where his doctorate was awarded in 1954. Immediately thereafter he was employed at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and simultaneously commenced further studies under the excellent guidance of Professor Richard Kuhn, the German 1938 Nobel Prize winner. This stay at the Max Planck Institute resulted in a DSc dissertation in 1958.

     The further academic career of Professor Bayer led him from Heidelberg and Karlsruhe to the destination most important in his biography as an academic teacher and researcher - the University of Tübingen, where he was active as professor and head of the Institute of Organic Chemistry during the long period from 1962 until 1996. He spent only three years (1967-1970) outside Germany, as the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston, Texas, USA. Professor Bayer had many research interests; these resulted in the monograph Gas Chromatography (published by Springer, Berlin, in 1957 and 1962), twelve book chapters, and almost 600 original research papers. Chromato-graphy, environmental, and peptide research were the most important fields of his scientific endeavours, which brought him many outstanding academic honours. Without any exaggeration it can be stated that Professor Ernst Bayer was one of the leading figures among the German chemists of his generation.

     His open and friendly attitude brought him into relatively early contact with Polish chromatography also. He visited our country and was a participant of scientific meetings organized therein. From 1986 he remained in a close touch with Professor Józef Śliwiok from the University of Silesia in Katowice and with his chromatography research group. The Editorial Board of 'Acta Chromatographica', offers its deepest sympathy to Professor Bayer's family - he will be very sadly missed by many in Poland as well as in his own country.

The Editors