Students who have written an outstanding master’s thesis in the field of chemistry at an Austrian university can apply for it: the Otto Vogl Prize. The man who gave the prize its name is one of the world’s most important plastics scientists. His extensive scientific work includes more than 600 publications, and his research has been reflected in 50 patents.
Vogl studied chemistry at the University of Vienna, went to Princeton University in 1955 and joined the Plastics Division at DuPont in Wilmington in the same year. In 1970, he became a professor in the new Polymer Science and Engineering program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 1983, he taught at the Polytechnic University of New York.
Vogl received numerous awards, holds honorary doctorates from Jena, Iasi, Osaka and the University of Leoben, and was chairman of the American Chemical Society Division of Polymer Chemistry.