Michael Grätzel: Honorary Medal from Czech Academy of Sciences
Michael Grätzel. Credit: Alain Herzog (EPFL)
Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL’s School of Basic Sciences has been the prestigious Honorary Medal De scientia et humanitate optime meritis by the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). This medal recognizes outstanding contributions to science and humanity.
The Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) is the leading non-university public research institution in the Czech Republic, established in 1992 as the successor to the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. It conducts both fundamental and strategic applied research across a broad spectrum of natural, technical, social sciences, and humanities.
The CAS awards the Honorary Medal "De scientia et humanitate optime meritis" to recognize individuals “for their meritorious contributions to science and the promotion of humanitarian ideas.”
This year, CAS has awarded the Medal to Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL, one of the most important researchers in chemistry of our time. The award was conferred in a solemn ceremony held in Prague on November 21, 2024, presided over by the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Professor Eva Zažímalová. The medal celebrates Professor Grätzel’s groundbreaking achievements in photonics and chemical sciences, solidifying his global reputation as a pioneer in renewable energy research.
About Professor Michael Grätzel
Professor Grätzel is world-renowned for inventing the first dye-sensitive solar cell in 1991 with chemist Brian O’Reagan. Just as plants use chlorophyll to turn sunlight into energy, the “Grätzel cells” use industrial dyes, pigments or quantum dots stimulated by sunlight to transmit an electrical charge. Within fifteen years of the original invention, Grätzel evolved the cells into an applied technology that is now being developed in universities and companies worldwide.
Having discovered molecular photovoltaics, Grätzel’s research has focused on designing mesoscopic photosystems based on molecular light harvesters that convert light very efficiently to electricity. He is credited with moving the photovoltaic field beyond the principle of light absorption via diodes to the molecular level. Recently his research engendered a second revolution in photovoltaics prompting the advent of perovskite solar cells. In just a single decade, their power-conversion efficiency increased from 3% to over 26%, rivaling and even exceeding the performance of conventional photovoltaics.
Grätzel also applied his innovative mesoscopic design concept to enhance the power of lithium-ion batteries and to create photoelectrochemical cells that efficiently generate chemical fuels from sunlight, opening a new path to provide future sources of renewable energy that can be stored.
Grätzel currently directs EPFL’s Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces within the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC). His 1,750 publications have received over 500,000 citations and have an h-index of 310. In 2019, Stanford University ranked Grätzel first of 100,000 top scientists across all fields. According to the Web of Science, he is currently the most highly cited chemist in the world.