Karl Schügerl

Karl Schügerl (born 22 June, 1927 in Sopron, Hungary) completed his chemical engineering studies at the University of Budapest in 1949. Afterwards he was a research engineer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Budapest and later on in a Hungarian design studio for bioplants. In 1956 Prof. Schügerl came to Germany to work at Riedel de Haën at Seelze near to Hannover and finished in 1959 his PhD thesis at the University of Hannover under the supervision of Prof. Schiemann in the area of kinetics and rheology of fluid bed systems. He spent his post doctoral time at the University of New York and Princeton in the USA working in the area of high-temperature pyrolysis of hydrocarbons and fundamental investigations of molecular beam technology. After his post doctoral stay he returned to Germany to finish his habilitation thesis (permission for teaching) in 1964 at the University of Hannover. Shortly afterwards he accepted a professorship at the University of Braunschweig in the area of process engineering and returned to Hannover as head of the Institute of Technical Chemistry in 1969. His research activities were focussed more and more to the area of biological process engineering. He retired from his position as head of the Institute of Technical Chemistry in 1995.

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Karl Schügerl was the first chemical engineer in Germany starting to work in biotechnology. He established a world wide network in this area and studied biological processes in detail under different process condition. Beside bioprocess development and downstream processing, his major focus was process analysis and process modelling. His early research interests were dedicated to bacteria, yeast and fungi cultivation; later on he was also active in the area in mammalian cell cultivation. He constantly opened new areas of research in biotechnology and brought his Institute of Technical Chemistry not only in a dominant position in Germany but also in Europe and worldwide.

Karl Schügerl refused several offers from renowned universities and concentrated his work on Hannover and the GBF Braunschweig. About 860 publications including several books on biotechnology show his extremely fruitful work in the different area of chemical engineering and biotechnology.