Professor Martin Quack, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, celebrates his 65th birthday on July 22, 2013. Quack is a well-known chemist in the area of molecular kinetics and spectroscopy. His experimental studies concentrate on high resolution infrared spectroscopy, infrared multiphoton excitation, and time resolved kinetic spectroscopy for practical applications relating to atmospheric spectroscopy and to isotope separation.

Martin Quack studied chemistry at the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, and spent a year at each of the University of Grenoble, France, the University of Göttingen, Germany, and the Max Planck Institute of Spectroscopy and of Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, before undertaking his Ph.D. at ETH (EPF) Lausanne, Switzerland. From 1975–1976 he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of William H. Miller, University of California, Berkeley, USA. He gained his Habilitation from the University of Göttingen in 1978 and was appointed to Professor there soon afterwards. In 1982, he moved to the University of Bonn, Germany, and this was followed by returning to ETH Zurich a year later.

Professor Quack is amongst others the Vice President of the Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie e. V. (DBG, German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry) and is a former member of the Board of the Angewandte Chemie.

Also of interest:

• S. Shaik and M. Quack Receive August Wilhelm von Hofmann Gold Medal,
  Sason Shaik, Israel, and Martin Quack, Switzerland, are awarded the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Gold Medal of the GDCh

  Selected publications by Martin Quack:

• Tunneling and Tunneling Switching Dynamics in Phenol and Its Isotopomers from High-Resolution FTIR Spectroscopy with Synchrotron Radiation,
  Sieghard Albert, Philippe Lerch, Robert Prentner, Martin Quack,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52 (1), 346–349.
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201205990
• Frontiers in Spectroscopy,
  Martin Quack,
  Faraday Discuss. 2011, 150, 533–565.
  DOI: 10.1039/C1FD00096A
• Handbook of High-resolution Spectroscopy,
  Martin Quack, Frédéric Merkt (Eds.),
  Wiley, Chichester, UK, 2011.
  Online ISBN: 9780470749593
  DOI: 10.1002/9780470749593
• Martin Quack, Die Asymmetrie des Lebens und die Symmetrieverletzungen der Physik: Molekulare Paritätsverletzung und Chiralität,
  Chapter 12 in Moleküle aus dem All?,
  Katharina Al-Shamery (Ed.),
  Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany, 2011.
  ISBN: 978-3-527-32877-2