My Aim in Publishing Has Always Been to Create Brands of Trust

Eva Wille, Weinheim, Germany, has been awarded the Gmelin-Beilstein Memorial Medal 2024 by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh, German Chemical Society). She was honored for her outstanding dedication to the advancement of chemical literature, extending far beyond her core responsibilities at Wiley-VCH Verlag, her long-time employer. The award particularly recognizes her commitment to promoting literature on the history of chemistry and her efforts to contextualize developments in various chemical fields—especially during the era of National Socialism.

We met Eva Wille in Weinheim at Wiley-VCH and discussed her motivations, milestones, and the enduring relevance of chemical publishing in a changing world.

“My aim in publishing has always been to create brands of trust,” she says. Her passion for books remains undiminished. “You learn a lot when you publish — about people, subjects, new techniques, history.” For Eva Wille, publishing is not just a profession but a continuous process of learning and cultural engagement. She continues to advocate for the role of chemical societies in promoting collaboration across disciplines and generations. “Chemical societies can bridge the deepening silos in science — from physics to medicine, from agriculture to sustainability,” she emphasizes.

Eva Wille’s current projects include supporting initiatives to preserve the historical record of chemistry and to foster global dialogue through accessible, high-quality publications published in the Lifes in Chemistry series.

Eva Elisabeth Wille studied chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany, where she received her PhD in 1983 for work supervised by Gerhard Binsch. After postdoctoral work with Dieter Ziessow at the Technical University Berlin, Germany, she joined VCH Verlagsgesellschaft (now Wiley-VCH) in 1985. She has held a range of positions within the company, including Head of the Journals Division and Publishing Director of the Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) programs, and was jointly responsible for the development of the Wiley-VCH book series. She also worked on the development of ChemPubSoc Europe (now Chemistry Europe), an association of 16 European chemical societies, and its chemistry journals program. She was Vice President and Executive Director, Chemistry, at Wiley-VCH until her retirement in 2020.

Among many other honors, she was awarded the Medal of the French Chemical Society (SCF, Société Chimique de France) and the Carl Duisberg Medal from the German Chemical Society (GDCh, Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker) in 2013. She was awarded Honorary Membership by the Chemical Society of Israel in 2017 and became an Honorary Chemistry Europe Fellow in 2022.

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