Michael studied chemistry and received his PhD in 1995 in the group of Prof. Bergerhoff at the university of Bonn, Germany. Even during his studies he was active in writing chemistry software. For the retrieval software of the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD), he won the German-Austrian Academic Software Award in 1993. In 1997, he founded the company Crystal Impact together with Dr. Klaus Brandenburg. Michael was substantially involved in the development of the Browser software for the Inorganic Materials Database "Pauling File". Based on his long-term experience in this area, he started with a new, universally applicable system for the simultaneous access to diverse crystallographic databases.
Michael died on June 30th, 2003 after a long, serious illness at the age of 39. With Michael we lose an always competent, reliable and helpful colleague.
Dr. Klaus Brandenburg and Dr. Holger Putz