The Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh; German Chemical Society) has awarded honorary membership to Gunter S. Fischer (left), Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding, Halle, Germany, and Ekkehard Winterfeldt (right), emeritus professor at the Leibnitz-Universität Hannover, Germany, in recognition of their services to the GDCh. Both were on the Board of the GDCh from 1996–1999, and were President (Winterfeldt) and Vice-President (Fischer) from 1996–1997.

Gunter S. Fischer studied at the University of Halle, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Alfred Schellenberger in 1971, completed his habilitation in 1979, and remained there as a lecturer until 1987. After a year working at the GERMED Pharmaceutical Company, Berlin, Germany, he returned to the University of Halle, where he was made full professor in 1992. In the same year, he also joined the Max Planck Research Group “Enzymology of the Peptide Bond” as Group Leader. He was made Managing Director of the Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding in 1997.

His recent research has involved discrimination by a cyclosporin derivative and the electronic properties of peptide bonds.

Ekkehard Winterfeldt studied at the Technische Hochschule Braunschweig (now the Technische Universität Braunschweig), Germany, where he received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Ferdinand Bohlmann in 1958. After spending a year at Bayer AG in Leverkusen, Germany, he moved to the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and in 1979, he joined the Technische Universität Hannover (now Leibniz-Universität Hannover), Germany.

His research includes the synthesis of ansasteroid compounds and the synthesis of enantiomerically pure building blocks by using cyclopentadienes as chiral templates in Diels–Alder reactions.

• A Cyclosporin Derivative Discriminates between Extracellular and Intracellular Cyclophilins,
  M. Malešević, J. Kühling, F. Erdmann, M. A. Balsley, M. I. Bukrinsky, S. L. Constant, G. Fischer, 
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2010, 49, 213–215.
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.200904529

• New Cyclohexadienone Derivatives: Preparation and Chiral Discrimination in High-Pressure Diels–Alder Cycloadditions,
  M.-E. Trân-Huu-Dâu, R. Wartchow, E. Winterfeldt, Y.-S. Wong,
  Chem. Eur. J. 2001, 7(11), 2349–2369.
  DOI: 10.1002/1521-3765(20010601)7:11<2349::AID-CHEM23490>3.0.CO;2-C