Press Release: Solvent Extraction Awards
Würzburg, September 10, 2014
Today the Carl Hanson Medal for a lifetime achievement in solvent extraction science and application has been awarded to Yizhak Marcus, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Besides extensive work in the fields of thermodynamics, separation methods, coordination chemistry in solution, selective solvation of ions and physico-chemical aspects of ion exchange and solvent extraction, Professor Marcus authored or edited eight books, published more than 300 scientific papers, supported the International Solvent Extraction Conferences since their beginning in 1966 and nourished scientific co-operations in this field all over the world.
Prof. Marcus started his scientific work in late 1952 at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel, studying the extraction of uranium from wet-process phosphoric acid, using ion exchange and solvent extraction methods. Uranium(VI) forms anionic complexes in such media. The formation of such complexes was the basis of his Ph.D. thesis. After post-doctoral studies in Stockholm, MIT and Oak Ridge, he returned to work at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in 1958, advancing from researcher to Head of Radiochemistry and finally Director of Chemistry. In 1965 Prof. Marcus was nominated as a full professor of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been active ever since, at present as Professor Emeritus.
He has been awarded a Senior Alexander-von-Humbold-Fellowship in 1971, R. Freund award for popular scientific writing in 1985, N.S. Kurnakov medal for physicochemical analysis of the Russian academy of Sciences in 1992, a Visiting Research Professorship at Leicester Unviersity in 1993 and the International Authors Grant of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1998.
He has been member in several commissions of IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) for nearly 4 decades, has a seat in the advisory boards of several international journals.
The Carl Hanson medal was jointly instituted in 1986 by the Society of Chemical Industry (UK) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chemisches Apparatewesen, Chemische Technik und Biotechnolgie e.V (DECHEMA, Germany) in memory of Professor Carl Hanson, who was Professor of Chemical Engineering at Bradford University U. at the time of his death in 1985.
Following graduation Professor Hanson joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority where he worked on mixer-settlers before joining the University of Bradford in 1960. There he continued his research developing and leading an internationally recognised teaching and research centre in the science and technology of liquid-liquid (solvent) extraction. In addition to publishing many scientific papers he published several seminal books including the Handbook of Solvent Extraction that he edited with Professors Lo and Baird in 1983. He also directed a series of continuing education courses on solvent extraction that were presented on a regular basis around theworld.
He was Secretary to the Organising Committee for the International Solvent Extraction Conference (ISEC'71) and when the International Committee for Solvent Extraction (ICSE) was established in 1974 he was the unanimous choice as General Secretary. Professor Hanson was also an active member of the Society of Chemical Industry and was a founder member of the Solvent Extraction Group (now the Separation Science and Technology Group) of the Society later becoming its Chairman. He was also a Vice-President of the Society.
In the frame of the 20th International Solvent Extraction Conference (ISEC) the ISEC award has been presented during the festive conference dinner in the cellars of the state-owned winery of the local former price-bishops. The International Committee for Solvent Extraction (ICSE) conferred for the first time the ISEC Award for significant contributions to the field of solvent extraction to Hans Reinhard, MEAB, Askim, Sweden.
He has together with Professor Jan Rydberg and Mr Hasse Persson developed the AKUFVE system in his PhD thesis, which is a world-wide recognized apparatus for fast and accurate measurement of partition coefficients. He was then research fellow at EURATOM in Italy and assisiting professor at Chalmers University in Gothenburg prior founding his own company (MEAB, Metallextraktion).He has developed several metal separation and recycling processes being described in a number of patents and publications. He has been a strong supporter of the solvent extraction community for close to 50 years without being either working at a University or a large company. Rather he has proven his skills as both a businessman as well as a very proficient solvent extraction chemist and resigned his position in the ICSE at this ISEC.