On July 13th, Matthias Ballauff celebrates his 60th birthday. Ballauff is Professor of Physics at the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, and a well-respected researcher in the fields of soft matter and functional materials.

Matthias Ballauff studied chemistry at the University of Mainz, Germany, and gained his Ph.D. there in the group of Professor Bernhard Wolf in 1981. He spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Professor Paul Flory at Stanford University, USA, before moving back to Mainz as a research assistant at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research. In 1989 he completed his Habilitation on the synthesis and phase behavior of liquid crystal polymers. From 1990–2003, he was Professor at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and from 2003–2009, he was Professor at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. In 2009 he was appointed the Professorship “Soft Matter and Functional Materials” at Humboldt University and became head of the corresponding Institute at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, Germany.

Ballauff’s research interests include polymer colloids, scattering methods such as light scattering, small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering, as well as polymeric structures in solution and their simulation, and polyelectrolytes.

• Thermosensitive Au-PNIPA Yolk–Shell Nanoparticles with Tunable Selectivity for Catalysis,
  Shuang Wu, Joachim Dzubiella, Julian Kaiser, Markus Drechsler, Xuhong Guo, Matthias Ballauff, Yan Lu,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51(9), 2229–2233.
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201106515
• Analysis of Polymer Colloids by Small-Angle X-Ray and Neutron Scattering: Contrast Variation,
  Matthias Ballauff,
  Adv. Eng. Mater. 2011, 13(8), 793–802.
  DOI: 10.1002/adem.201000303
• Glycopolymer-Grafted Polystyrene Nanospheres,
  André Pfaff, Vaishali S. Shinde, Yan Lu, Alexander Wittemann, Matthias Ballauff, Axel H. E. Müller,
  Macromol. Biosci. 2011, 11(2), 199–210.
  DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201000324