FEMS presents a wide range of awards at its biennial EUROMAT Conferences but the most prestigious of these is the European Materials Medal. Established in 1993, the medal is awarded in recognition of truly outstanding contributions to the field of Materials Science and Engineering. Only the most exceptional workers in the materials field qualify for this prize, and the previous recipients have been:

1993 Prof. Michael F. Ashby, UK;
1995 Prof. Herbert Gleiter, Germany;
1997 Prof. André Pineau, France;
1999 Prof. Wilfried Kurz, Switzerland;
2001 Prof. Colin J. Humphreys, UK;
2003 Prof. Gerhard Wegner, Germany;
2005 Prof. Jeff de Hosson, Netherlands;
2007 Prof. Subra Suresh, USA.

The winner of the European Materials Medal this year is Professor Ludwig Schultz, Director of the Institute of Metallic Materials at the Leibniz-Institute of Solid State and Materials Research (IFW) in Dresdan, Germany.
Ludwig Schultz was born in Meissen, Germany, on 18 May 1947. At the age of 19 he went to the University of Göttingen to study Physics and ten years later gained a PhD for a thesis entitled “Flux Pinning in Superconductors by Regularly or Statistically Distributed Precipitates”.
His career began in 1973 as a Research Associate in the Institute of Physics at the same University, where he remained until the end of 1979 apart from a year spent as Postdoc at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Centre in Yorktown Heights, New York during 1978.
In January 1980 he was appointed as a Staff Scientist at Siemens Research Laboratories in Erlangen, a post that he held for nearly ten years before becoming Head of the Department for High Temperature Superconductors and Magnetic Materials in the same establishment. He held that position until May 1993 and during that period became an Honorary Lecturer in the Physics Department at the University of Augsburg.
A move to the Technical University of Dresden followed in June 1993 when he became Full Professor of Metallic Materials and Metal Physics and Director of the Institute of Metallic Materials at the Liebniz-Institute.  Since April 2008 he has also been the Scientific Director of IFW Dresden.
Ludwig Schultz has a wide range of interests and he has published an astonishing total of over 700 papers in refereed journals on topics which include:

-Superconducting materials
-Superconducting levitation systems
-Magnetic shape memory alloys
-Giant and colossal magneto-resistance
 materials
-Magnetic thin films
-Amorphous metals
-Nanocrystalline materials
-Electrochemical properties of functional
 materials
-Mechanical properties

According to the Web of Science his publications have received over 14,000 citations, resulting in the very high h-index value (a measure of a scientist’s number of publications and their impact) of 52. His tremendous activity has also led to more than 65 patent applications.
Amidst all of this work, Prof. Schultz has found the time to help with the organisation of many major conferences and workshops.  He has also served on a number of Executive Boards, including those of the German Materials Society, DGM (1992-1996), FEMS (1996-2000), DPG, the world’s largest organisation of physicists (2004-2008) and GDNÄ, The Society of German Researchers and Physicians, of which he is currently Vice-President.
Such ability has already been recognised by five previous awards, including two from DGM: the Masing Material Award (1986); and the Heyn-Denkmünze Prize (2006). 
 
The European Materials Medal will be presented to Prof. Schultz during the Opening Ceremony of the FEMS EUROMAT 2009 Conference at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow on 6 September 2009. On the following morning he will present a Plenary Lecture entitled “Riding on Magnetic Fields - The Miraculous World of Superconductors”.  In this, he will discuss the various concepts for magnetic levitation that are currently in vogue.
The conventional system is the Transrapid, which runs regularly between Shanghai Airport and Shanghai City Centre.  The approach being adopted by the team at IFW Dresden is a passive superconducting magnetically levitated system, which uses bulk superconductors cooled only to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-196 ºC).  At low temperatures, superconductors not only transmit the electric current without any resistance, but are also able to freeze-in a magnetic field of any configuration.  In this way they act as permanent magnets but with a magnetic remanence which for massive YBaCuO material is far larger than that of ferromagnetic permanent magnets.  The ability to freeze in a magnetic field can be used for completely new applications.  In his talk, Prof. Schultz will demonstrate this for different types of superconducting magnetically levitated trains, which can either be in an upright position, in a hanging position, or moving along a wall without any mechanical contact.  With regard to scaling up, the SupraTrans project will be presented.  

Further information about EUROMAT 2009 can be found on the Conference Website: www.euromat2009.fems.eu.