We congratulate our colleague Christian Schnurr on winning the 2nd Audience Award for Science Communication at the Salzburg University Weeks. The Salzburg University Weeks are Europe's oldest summer school and are dedicated to socio-political topics, this year under the motto “What keeps us alive and what poisons us.” Schnurr took this quite literally and gave an overview of the history of the concept of poison through European intellectual history, from antiquity to Christianity to the modern era. His thesis that the modern buzzword “toxic,” as we know it in “toxic relationship” or “toxic atmosphere,” reflects pre-modern concepts of poison, was well received. The award reinforces Schnurr's ambition to explore chemistry from a philosophical perspective.

Photo by Dr. Henning Klingen