Records and Highlights
 

This research led him to leave Hannover. Until 1986, Ertl was a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München after which he was director of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin until his retirement. In 2007, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from the Swedish Academy of Sciences for his study of chemical processes on solid surfaces. His findings are, for example, important for industry and, among other things, help to better understand how fuel cells work.

Catalysis and surface chemistry are still important fields at the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at the Leibniz Universität Hannover.