Editorial

Special issues dedicated to a specific event or to a single person have been rare in the history of Planta Medica. The 50^th anniversary of the journal and the Society of Medicinal Plant Research (GA) was the latest occasion for such a commemorative issue. Now, the October issue of 2004 is dedicated to the departing Editor-in-Chief of Planta Medica, Professor Dr. Adolf Nahrstedt. His retirement from the journal’s helm coincides with his retirement from academic duties which will be celebrated in a farewell symposium at the University of Münster on October 16, 2004.

Professor Nahrstedt has been associated with the journal for 21 years as Co-Editor (1983 - 1992) and Editor-in Chief (1993 - 2004). In this latter function, he has shaped Planta Medica during the past twelve years to its present status. During his tenure as Editor, the journal underwent a profound change from a Europe-centered specialist journal to a truly international, highly regarded multidisciplinary forum for Pharmaceutical Biologists and many other scientists interested in the multifacetted field of natural products. Planta Medica has witnessed an extended period of quantitative and qualitative growth. The number of issues and printed pages doubled in the years 1997 to 2003; key indicators for the importance and quality of the journal such as the impact factor have been continuously rising to reach an all-time high of 2.289 in 2002. A total number of 5276 cites of Planta Medica were recorded by ISI in 2003.

No wonder that the rising profile of Planta Medica has attracted (and still attracts) a growing number of manuscript submissions. This figure has been increasing at an annual rate of approx. 10 % and will probably hit the one thousand mark in the current year. This phase of extraordinary development was carefully and skillfully guided and controlled by Prof. Nahrstedt. Without his very personal dedication and enormous amount of hard work and time spent for the journal, such a success story would not have been possible. Managing and editing Planta Medica has been, to a large extent, his ”weekend affair” of twelve years. He managed the journal with dedicated part-time support from his students but without a well-staffed editorial office as is customary for other journals of the same size. He brought extreme attention to every single manuscript; the characteristic marks and comments pencilled in virtually all submitted papers to be further distributed to co-editors and reviewers are witness to his thoroughness.

Who is the person behind this success of Planta Medica? Professor Nahrstedt is certainly one of the widest-known personalities of the GA. Most members of the Society and all regular attendees of the annual GA congresses have met him on one or the other occasion or may have been in contact with him in the context of a manuscript submission to Planta Medica. Professor Nahrstedt studied Pharmacy and Food Chemistry at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and received his PhD degree in 1971 from the same University. Shortly after his habilitation in 1976 he was appointed at the Technical University of Braunschweig as an Associate Professor. Since 1986 he has been a Full Professor at the University of Münster. Beyond his activities as academic teacher and Editor of Planta Medica, Prof. Nahrstedt accepted various appointments within the university administration as well as duties outside of academia. He served, among others, as a Vice-Dean and Dean of the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and as a member of the Founding Commission for the Institute of Pharmacy at the University of Leipzig. He is a long-standing member of the Pharmacopoeia Commission of the BGA and, later, of the BfArM, and a Board Member of the German Society for Phytotherapy (GPhyt). He is an Honorary Member of European Academy of Natural Medicine, a recipient of the R. F. Weiss Award of the Society for Phytotherapy, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Ovidius University in ConstanŢa, Roumania.

Professor Nahrstedt has published some 180 research and review articles and numerous book chapters and contributions for handbooks. While his early research had a decidedly chemo-ecological outlook and was centered around the chemistry, biochemistry and physiology of cyanogenic metabolites in plants and insects, his focus of the past fifteen years has been on topical issues of medicinal plant research and rational phytotherapy. Here, Professor Nahrstedt is probably best known for his major contributions on St. John’s wort.

As the new Editor-in-Chief, I am glad to take on the responsibility for a leading journal in our research field which has flourished thanks to the continuous attention and dedication of my predecessors. But, even though stepping down from the Board of Editors, Professor Nahrstedt will not sever all his ties with the journal, as he has kindly agreed to contribute the monthly comments on the medicinal plants appearing on the journal’s front cover.

Dear Professor Nahrstedt, on the occasion of your retirement, I wish you the best. I hope that you will now find the time and leisure for those personal interests which had to stay in second line during your tenure as Editor and as Head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology and Phytochemistry. I am probably not mistaken, however, to assume your continuing interest and active involvement in matters of phytopharmacy and natural products.

Matthias Hamburger PhD[*]