Hamburg, 07 February 2019:
Evotec AG mourns the loss of Nobel laureate and Company co-founder Prof. Manfred Eigen, who passed away on 06 February at the age of 91.

Prof. Eigen was born in Bochum in 1927 into a family of musicians. When the Second World War crossed his original plans to study music as well, Manfred Eigen decided to study the “harmonies” of molecules, instead. In 1967, the biophysical chemist received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He founded the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (MPI-BPC) in Goettingen, and was among the co-founders of Evotec in 1993.

Evotec’s board and the workforce will remember Prof. Eigen as a true innovator whose vision of evolutionary biotechnology laid the foundation of modern-day drug discovery. Prof. Eigen always maintained close connections with Evotec, and was a guest of honour when the Company opened its research site in Hamburg in 2012. The site, which was named “Manfred Eigen Campus” in his honour remains Evotec’s headquarters to this day.

Dr Werner Lanthaler, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec, said: “It is with great sadness, that we have received the news about the passing of our company’s co-founder Prof. Manfred Eigen, one of the great geniuses of our time. It is simply impossible to overstress the profound influence that Manfred Eigen’s work has had on modern drug discovery. Our thoughts are with his wife, Dr. Ruthild Oswatitsch-Eigen, and his family.”