The Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung is a chemical research institute located in Mülheim an der Ruhr

Mülheim

Mülheim an der Ruhr, also called "City on the River", is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. The institute is part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, a network of scientific research institutes mainly located in Germany. Founded in 1912, as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, to study the chemistry and uses of coal, it became an independent Max-Planck-Institute in 1949.

Research

The Institute carries out basic research in organic and organometallic chemistry, in homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis as well as in theoretical chemistry. The principal aim is to develop new methods for the selective and environmentally benign preparation of new compounds and materials.

In 1945, a pilot plant for the extraction of shale oil had been in operation at the "Kaiser Wilhelm Institute", and from 1943-1969, Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 laureate Karl Ziegler

Karl Ziegler

Karl Waldemar Ziegler was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Giulio Natta, for work on polymers. The Nobel Committee recognized his "excellent work on organometallic compounds [which]...led to new polymerization reactions and ... paved the way for new and highly...

worked at the institute.