Professor Herbert Gleiter received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. In 1973, Gleiter became Chair Professor of Materials Science at the University of the Saarland in Germany In 1994, he was appointed Member of the Executive Board of the Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany, and 4 years later he became the Founding Director of the Center's Institute of Nanotechnology. In 2012 the University of Nanjing of Science and Technology founded the "Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience" and appointed him as the Institute's Founding Director as well as Zijin Professor of this University.

Among Gleiter's more than 40 awards and honors are the Masing Prize of the German Society for Metals (1972); the Leibniz Prize of the German National Science Foundation (1988); Max-Plack Research Prize (1993); Gold Medal of the Federation of European Material Societies (1995); Heyn Medal of the German Society for Materials Science (1998); Heisenberg Medal (1998) and Humboldt Medal (2006); Gold Medal of Acta Materialia (2007); the Von Hippel Award of MRS (2008); the Mehl Award of the TMS Society (2009), the 2009 Blaise Pascal Medal of the European Academy of Sciences and the Cothenius Medal, the highest award of the German National Academy. His publications have been cited more than 22 000 times. Six universities in Europe and abroad awarded him honorary doctorates.

He is a Member of 10 Academies of Science and/or Engineering: e.g. of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (1999), US National Academy of Engineering (2004), Indian National Academy of Engineering (2006), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004), the Indian National Academy of Sciences (2009), the European Academy of Sciences (2009), the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2014) as well as the Academia Europaea and the EU Academy of Sciences (2014).

Professional Career

• Since 2012: Director and Chair Professor of  the Herbert Gleiter Institute of  Nanoscience of Nanjing   University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, P.R.China
• Since 2006: Senior Scientist at the Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT),   Germany
• 2007 - 2010: Distinguished Professor, Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA
• 2005: Distinguished Scholar of the Korean Research Foundation, Seoul, Korea
• 2004 - 2007: Kuang-pui Chair Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PR China
• 1998 - 2004: Director of the Institute of Nanotechnology, Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany
• 1994 - 1998: Member of the Executive Board of the Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany
• 1987 - 1994: Founding Director of the Institute of New Materials, Saarbruecken, Germany
• 1982: Call to the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland
• 1980: Call to the University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
• 1973 - 1994: Professor/Director of the Institute of Material Science, University of the Saarland, Germany
• 1972: Professor, Institute of Materials Science, University Bochum, Germany
• 1971: Visiting Sientist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA
• 1970: D. Sc. in Material Science at the University of Bochum, Germany
• 1966 - 1969: Research Fellow at Harvard University Cambridge, USA
• 1966: Ph.D. in Physics at the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany
• 1959 - 1965: Student of Mechanical Engineering and Physics at the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany

Honours and Awards (selection)

• 2015: Honorary Doctorate of the City University of Hong Kong
• 2015: Received the Cothenius Medal from the German National Academy of Sciences
• 2014: 2014 Distinguished Lecture Award, City University Hong Kong
• 2012: Award of Zijin Chair Professorship of the Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience of the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
• 2012: Nanomaterials Award 2012
• 2012: Edward DeMille Campbell Award, American Society for Metals (ASM)
• 2009: R.F. Mehl Award of the Minerals, Metals, Materials Society, USA
• 2009: Blaise Pascal Medal of the European Academy of Sciences, Belgium
• 2009: NANO Today Award of the Agency for Science, Technology Research, Singapore
• 2008: Honorary Doctorate of the University of Muenster, Germany
• 2008: Honorary Doctorate of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland
• 2008: Achievement Award NANOSPD Int. Steering Committee
• 2008: Staudinger-Durrer  Award of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland
• 2008: Von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society, USA
• 2007: Gold Medal of Acta Materialia
• 2006: Humboldt Medal of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany
• 2005: Distinguished Scholar of the Korean Research Foundation
• 2004: Member and Honorary Professor/Doctor  of Lanzhou University, PR China
• 2004: H. Lee Lecture Award of Chinese Academy of Science
• 2004: Honorary Professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PR China
• 2003: Nanomaterials Award of the Deutsche Bank, Germany
• 2002: Honorary Doctorate of the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
• 2000: Van Horn Award of Case Western University Cleveland, USA
• 1999: Werner Heisenberg Medal of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany
• 1998: Heyn Medal of the German Society for Materials Science
• 1995: Gold Medal of the Federation of European Material Societies (FEMS), Belgium
• 1993: Vinci of Excellence Award of the Hennessy-Vuitton Foundation,  France
• 1993: Max-Planck-Research Prize of the Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck-Society, Germany
• 1992: Member of the President’s Council of the University of Illinois, USA
• 1992: TMS Lecture Award of the US Minerals, Metals and Materials Society
• 1991: Order of Merit of Saarland, Germany
• 1988: Leibniz Prize of the German National Science Foundation (DFG)
• 1984: Alcoa Prize of the Alcoa Foundation, USA
• 1979: Karl-Schurz Award of the University of Wisconsin, USA
• 1972: Masing Prize of the German Society for Metals

Memberships in National Academies

• 1998: Member of the German National Academy of Sciences – Leopoldia, Germany,
• 2004: Member of the US National Academy of Engineering
• 2004: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2006: Member of the Indian National Academy of Engineering
• 2007-12: Vice President of the German National Academy of Sciences
• 2009: Member of the European Academy of Sciences
• 2009: Member of the Indian Academy of Sciences
• 2011: Member of the Indian Science Academy
• 2014: Member of the Academia Europaea
• 2014: Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
• 2015: Member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2017: Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Inventors

Honorary Memberships

• 1985: Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science
• 1994: Honorary Member of the Materials Research Society of India
• 1996: Honorary Fellow of the Materials Research Society of India
• 2008: Honorary Member of the Materials Research Society (MRS), USA
• 2009: Honorary Member of the German Materials Society
• 2011: Honorary Member of the American Nano Society
• 2011: Fellow of the Indian Society of Mathematical Modelling
• 2011: Fellow of the Indian Society of Mathematical Modelling and Simulation
• 2011: Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS), USA

Founding of a New Research Institute

Founding of the “Herbert  Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience” in 2012 at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. This Institute is planned to have a size and a structure of a Max Planck Institute in Germany.

International Ranking

• Web of Science Citation Index
  
  • ​​​​​​​Sum of all citations:  21 600
    
  • h - index:  66
    
  • Number of publications:  328
    
• Listed among the Top 100 Materials Scientists 
  
  • ​​​​​​​on  rank 15 world wide
    
  • on  rank  2 in Europe
    
  • on  rank  1 in nanoscience world wide

Three most Highly Cited Publications

• Nanocrystalline materials
  H. Gleiter
  Progress in Materials Science 33  223-315 (1989)
  Times cited 3100
  
• Nanostructured materials. Basic Concepts and Microstructure
  H. Gleiter
  Acta Materialia  48  1-29  (2000)
  Times cited 1600
  
• Ceramics ductile at low temperatures
  J. Karch, R. Birringer, H. Gleiter
  Nature  330  556-558  (1987)
  ​​​​​​​Times cited 790

Scientific Contributions

• Probing the Limits of Quantum Physics by diffraction experiments with nano-clusters with sizes of up to 20 million atomic mass units.
• Proposing and pioneering a New Kind of non-crystalline Materials (Nanoglasses) with defect/chemical microstructures similarly to the ones of today’s crystalline materials. Nanoglasses permit the development of new technologies based on non-crystalline materials instead of today’s (crystalline materials based) technologies.
• Pioneering and development  of a new class of materials: Nanostructured Materials
• Proposal of today’s accepted atomistic  model of the atomic structure of  grain boundaries:  the Structural Unit Model of Grain Boundaries
• Development of the Dislocation Pair Model of all modern High Temperature Superalloys

Publications/Exhibitions about Herbert Gleiter

• A.Nordmann, Perspectives on Sciences  17, 2009, 123 -  MIT Press Journals, doi:10.1162/posc.2009.17.2.123
• Nanotechnologien im Kontext,  A.Nordmann, J.Shummer, A.Schwarz Eds., Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006, Berlin, Germany; ISBN 3-89838-074-2
• Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology: Herbert Gleiter, http://www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de
• Pionier der Nanowissenschaften, www.chemie.de/news/d/96897/
• German Museum Munich,
  Center of New Technologies – Permanent Exhibition on Nano- and
  Biotechnology.: The discovery of Nanomaterials by Herbert Gleiter
• Listed in Wikipedia and various  “ Who is Who“
• DIE ZEIT: Auf zu neuen Dimensionen, www.zeit de/2005/26/nano