University of Karachi Dedicates Research Centre to Tübingen Professor Biochemist Wolfgang Voelter

The University of Karachi has dedicated its new chemical research centre to University of Tübingen’s Professor Wolfgang Voelter. The Professor Wolfgang Voelter Laboratories Complex was officially opened by Ina Lepel, Germany’s ambassador to Pakistan, at a ceremony attended by 600 distinguished guests. The University of Karachi said in a statement that the Laboratories Complex was a tribute to the tremendous services Professor Voelter has rendered to Biochemistry in Pakistan.

Professor Voelter has been working with Pakistani researchers for some forty years and has led an untiring effort to provide both scientific and financial assistance to enable his research projects to go ahead with international working groups in their home countries. Valuable research in these groups included the identification of new biodegradable pesticides and alkaloids from plants, and toxins from scorpions and snakes.

His closest and most productive international partnership was with his Pakistani colleagues, Professor Salimuzaman Siddiqui and Professor Atta-ur-Rahman. Together, the three men acquired successive grants and sponsorships which they used to create research institutes “literally from nothing,” said Voelter, looking back.

The Director of the institute, Professor Atta-ur-Rahman, later became Pakistan’s Minister of Science, largely due to the outstanding reputation of his institute.

Professor Voelter has spent many decades isolating natural chemical agents from tropical and subtropical flora and fauna - with the aim of finding medical applications for them. He has received the Sebastian Kneipp Award for the structural identification of natural chemical agents, the Erich Krieg Award for metabolism studies of drugs, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Award. Professor Voelter has been honoured in Pakistan, receiving Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Karachi and Hamdard, the Pakistan President Gold Medal, and in 1995, Pakistan’s greatest honour, the Sitara Award.