1977), “Low intensity two step absorption of chlorophyll a in vivo” (Leupold et al. 1978), and “Collective excitation and luminescence of chlorophyll in vivo” (Leupold et al. 1979). For the excellent results emerging from these interdisciplinary efforts, Paul Hoffmann and the associated team of physicists and mathematicians were awarded the highly prestigious Leibniz Prize (Leibniz-Preis) of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in 1979. Paul Hoffmann was

well known for bringing together national and international researchers with multiple expertise. At home and among foreign colleagues, he had an excellent reputation. He paid special attention to the COMECON1 Photosynthesis Research BIX 1294 purchase Conferences and Programs, which in the 1970s and 1980s provided virtually the only international forum for many ‘Eastern

Bloc’ scientists and students. These meetings and programs, despite their relative isolation, were instrumental in maintaining photosynthesis research laboratories with international standards in these countries. Hoffmann, and his AC220 order colleagues and friends, Alexander A. Krasnovsky (USSR), Andrey B. Rubin (USSR), Danuta Frąckowiak (Poland), Ágnes Faludi-Dániel (Hungary), Tubastatin A mouse Zoltan Szigeti (Hungary), Zdeněk Šesták (Czechoslovakia), Ivan Yordanov (Bulgaria)—to name just a few—never compromised for less and spared no effort to launch longstanding research collaboration and scientific exchange. Paul Hoffmann’s important role in these collaborative activities is illustrated by recollections of his colleagues and friends. Natalia Averina, Nikolai Shalygo, Galina Savchenko, and Elena Yaronskaya, from the Institute of Biophysics and Cell Engineering (former Institute of Photobiology), Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk, wrote: In 1969 Professor Dr. Alexander Shlyk, the then director of the Institute of Photobiology (Minsk, Belarus), and

Professor Dr. Paul Hoffmann agreed to establish collaborative work in Minsk. The aim was to elucidate the role of kinetin in the biosynthesis of protochlorophyllide. A resulting first joint article was published in 1970 (Shlyk et al. 1970). At that time nobody 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase could imagine that the collaboration would become very fruitful and last for long years. Over the years 25 joint scientific articles were published. We will always remember Professor Hoffmann talking with enthusiasm about problems of energetics in photosynthesis. Professor Hoffmann was a very hospitable person. He always promoted scientific collaboration and was very glad that the collaboration continued with his successor—Professor Bernhard Grimm. A personal recollection of Prof. Dr. Danuta Wróbel, Institute of Physics, Poznan University of Technology, Poland, follows: For the first time I met Professor Hoffmann in Liblice (Czechoslovakia) in 1972 during a Symposium “Photosynthesis and Chlorophylls in vivo with Special Reference to Methods of Their Determination”. I was very much interested in the physical processes in photosynthesis.