catalysis

When the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald received the Nobel prize for his research on catalysis in 1909 he probably didn't expect that his field of work would still be one of the most important topics in modern chemistry one hundred years later. Nevertheless all three Nobel Prizes in chemistry in the last years were given to scientists that worked in catalysis research. One of them, Gerhard Ertl will be giving a talk on the catalysis happening when solids are coated with gossamer surfaces. The scientist got the Nobel prize in 2007 and named his speech "From atoms to complexity - reactions on surfaces…