2009 Award Winners
Pioneers in research management
Special Prize Winner Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. E. h. Max Syrbe
The jury of the Löhn Prize honoured the outstanding personal commitment to knowledge and technology transfer shown by Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. E. h. Max Syrbe in his capacity as a long-standing member and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Steinbeis Foundation.
Max Syrbe was born in Leipzig in 1929 and studied physics in Frankfurt am Main. After obtaining his doctorate in 1953 in applied physics and control engineering, he worked for BBC in Mannheim for 14 years, initially as a development and project engineer, and ultimately as director and head of the electronics division. In 1968, he took over as head of the Institute for Vibration Research (ISF), which was renamed the Fraunhofer Institute IITB in Karlsruhe in 1970.
In 1966, Max Syrbe was appointed to the Senate of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, of which he became President in 1983. He held this office until 1993. It is to his initiative that we owe the concept for the broad outlines of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s further development. Max Syrbe championed performance-based contract research for industry and the public sector as the foundation for the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s role as the leading organisation for applied research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1975, the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Karlsruhe appointed Max Syrbe as an honorary professor. From 1983, Max Syrbe was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Steinbeis Foundation, and from 1991 he chaired the Board.
Max Syrbe’s professional work focused on the fields of automation and anthropotechnology, in particular human-machine systems, as well as research policy and research management. Max Syrbe was the recipient of the Fraunhofer Sculpture, the highest honour awarded by the Fraunhofer Society. He held an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen and was an honorary senator at the University of Freiburg. In addition, he was a recipient of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Bavarian Order of Merit.
In recognition of his achievements, Max Syrbe was awarded the Steinbeis Foundation’s Transfer Prize – the Löhn Prize – as a special honour.