Obituary – Professor Dr. Werner Herz

Professor Dr. Werner Herz. (Photo: Penny J. Gilmer)

Professor Werner Herz, former holder of The Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professorship and since 1995 Emeritus Professor at Florida State University (FSU) at Tallahassee, Florida, died on August 17, 2012. As a natural products chemist of international distinction, he was highly active in research in this field and also served during his long career as editor, board member and reviewer of major journals and book series. In the international natural products community, he will be particularly remembered as a generous mentor and co-author of multiple publications.

Professor Herz was born in 1921 in Stuttgart, Germany. He attended the Eberhard-Ludwig Gymnasium in Stuttgart, but had to leave Germany during the Third Reich. In December 1937, he immigrated with his parents and sister to the United States. He received his BA degree from The University of Colorado in Boulder, CO. There, Werner met his future wife, the late Marcia. After completing his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry in 1947 and post-doctoral work with Roger Adams at The University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, he joined the Faculty at FSU in 1949, where he had a long and productive research career in natural products chemistry until his death.

In his scientific career of over 67 years, he was the author and co-author of more than 550 publications, many of them on the structure determination and chemistry of terpenoids, in general, and sesquiterpene lactones, in particular. He served as Senior Editor at the Journal of Organic Chemistry for 30 years and was the Editor of “Progress in the Chemistry of Organic Natural Products” (Zechmeister Series) for 40 years. Last, but not least, Professor Herz served uninterruptedly from 1979 to 2011 on the Advisory Board of Planta Medica and was a loyal reviewer of manuscripts for this journal until near the time of his death.

Werner Herz retired officially in 1995, but he retained his office at FSU for further 17 years until the time of his death. This time was mainly used to publish papers in collaboration with former students, post-doctorals and visiting scientists. He was the “quiet hero” for many young scientists around the World, including myself, who he guided to write terse and lucid publications. He was always willing to correct, in Wernerʼs own words, their “English language infidelities”.

While Werner Herz was a dedicated teacher, mentor and scholar in science, I personally remember him also as a man of broad interests and good humor. He was a generous, interactive human being! In his last note to me in June 2010, referring to his upcoming 90th birthday, he wrote the following: “ I have had a lot of fun – and made a lot of friends – doing what I never thought Iʼd be doing when I was growing up in Germany. At that time I thought Iʼd be a historian – or an essayist. But perhaps it was a bit of the DNA that I share with a greatuncle who got his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under Knoevenagel in Berlin more than a century ago”.

A man of great scientific competence and intellectual generosity, Professor Werner Herz will be missed by colleagues around the globe.

Nikolaus H. Fischer Professor Emeritus, Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA