From 1949/50 to 1954 undergraduate-studies in chemistry at the Universities of Freiburg, Bonn, and Tübingen. In addition four semesters study of philosophy and two semesters economics. 1954 Diploma Examination, afterwards graduate work with Professor Dr. Walter Hückel, Ph.D. 1957. For one year assistant with Professor Walter Hückel, from 1958 on preparation of the habilitation, 1961 habilitation in organic chemistry, 1962 Private Dozent, 1968 APL Professor. 1970 Full Professor of organic chemistry and head of the Department of Organic Chemistry at the University of Saarbrücken (successor of Professor Bernd Eistert). Since April 1975 Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Tübingen (successor of Prof. Eugen Müller). M. Hanack was one of the editors of the standard synthesis handbook Houben-Weyl, Methods in Organic Chemistry. He is also one of the editors of the journal Synthetic Metals. M. Hanack is a member of the advisory board of Synthesis.
The scientific work of M. Hanack started with investigations on organic fluorine compounds, followed by work in special topics of stereochemistry, mostly in the field of conformational analysis. He wrote one of the first books on conformational analysis Conformation Theory (1969). M. Hanack continued his research work then mostly in the field of organic reaction mechanisms, especially investigations on the chemistry of vinyl- and phenyl cations. Already in 1964 M. Hanack was able to prove the existence of a vinyl cation as a reactive intermediate. A book on Vinyl Cations was published in 1979 together with P. Stang, Z. Rappoport and L. R. Subramanian (Academic Press). Most of the work on vinyl cations was done in relation to solvolysis studies in which mostly super leaving groups like triflates and nonaflates were used for the generation of vinyl cations. Later on it was also possible for the first time to prove the existence of an alkynyl cation.
Several other research topics which were investigated by M. Hanack are the following: synthesis with perfluoroalkyl sulfones, extensive work on the synthesis of fluorinated pyrethroids.
Since 1980 the experimental work of M. Hanack concentrates more on interdisciplinary topics, mostly on topics which allows a combination of synthetic organic chemistry with material science. This work focused at the beginning mainly, on the synthesis and properties of bridged macrocyclic metal complexes which were studied concerning their properties as intrinsic organic conductors, as well as in relation to their magnetic and non-linear optical properties. As macrocycles mostly substituted and non-substituted transition metal phthalocyanines and naphthalocyanines were assembled in a stacked arrangement as the so-called shish-kebab-polymers.
The intensive work on phthalocyanines was continued applying phthalocyanines as subunits in ladder polymers. For the first time it was possible to synthesize fully conjugated phthalocyanine-polymers by applying repetitive Diels-Alder reactions.
Already about 20 years ago the first crystal structure of different phases of phthalocyaninatotitanoxide (PcTiO) was published. Recently the older work on PcTiO which in the meantime became a very important charge generation material e.g. in Xerox machines, was taken up again. Substituted PcTiO's, soluble in organic solvents were synthesized and their photoconductive and charge generating properties were studied in detail.
Since several years our scientific work concentrates on the following topics:
- The optical limiting properties of many new synthesized indium and gallium phthalocycanines and naphthalocyanines of different structures and with different axial substituents are extensively studied regarding their optical limiting properties. These class of compounds turned out to be the best optical limiters which are known up to now.
- For the first time it was possible to generate a new higly reactive Pc-species, the dehydrophthalocyanine (see molecule above). The reactivity of this species is investigated in detail, especially with the goal to obtain dimerisation reactions to generate higher condensated Pc's, for which special electrical and NLO- properties are expected.
- Sugar substituted phthalocyanines- and naphthalocyanines were almost unknown up to now. We are concentrating our research now also on the syntheses of these new class of compounds for investigations in phodynamic therapy.
In addition to the already mentioned two monographs M. Hanack has published up to now more than 670 papers. Since 1964 more than 230 students have received their Ph.D. in the Group.
