Manfred Eigen, 1967 Nobel chemistry laureate, dies at 91

BERLIN – Manfred Eigen, who shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1967 for his work on extremely fast chemical reactions, has died. He was 91.

The Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, which Eigen founded in 1971, said that he died on Wednesday. Herbert Jaeckle, an emeritus director at the institute, said Thursday that “perhaps more than anybody else, Manfred Eigen understood how to think out of the box and successfully pursue new scientific directions.”

Eigen was awarded half the 1967 chemistry Nobel, with the other half going jointly to R.G.W. Norrish and George Porter.

Eigen in 1953 introduced high-frequency sound waves as a way of bringing about rapid chemical reactions and processes, whose speed could be calculated based on the sound waves’ energy.