When Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (ABC) was founded in 2001, Günter Gauglitz was one of the inaugural and formative editors. It comes as no surprise that he was nominated to represent the German community considering his longstanding career as pre-eminent analytical chemist. He entered the field as a physical chemist receiving his first faculty position at the University of Tübingen in 1983. In 1987 he became Professor of Analytical Chemistry and Informatics establishing a booming research group of students, postdocs and visitors with whom he would focus on optical chemical and biochemical sensing, optical spectroscopy, characterization and modification of surfaces, experiments at interfaces, and data evaluation using chemometric methods. His research would inherently also focus on actual sensing needs covering applications in environmental, computational, and health-care analytics. Even when he organized conferences such as the Europtrode, insiders tell that the important figures of merit of analytical chemistry would not be forgotten and selection of the best wines for the conference’s social event were diligently determined by multiple contestants with appropriate replicate analyses.

Between 2000 and 2003 he was the Chairman of the IUPAC Commission V.4 and member of IUPAC division "Analytical Chemistry", and between 2004 and 2007 he chaired the Division of Analytical Chemistry of the German Chemical Society (GDCh). In recognition of his research and impact on the analytical community, Günter received the Wallac-Award of the Society of Biomolecular Screening in 1997, the Fritz Pregl Medal of the Austrian Chemical Society in 2006, the Carl-Duisberg-Plakette of the GDCh in 2012, and the Clemens-Winkler medal in 2014 of the GDCh Division Analytical Chemistry.

Günter’s scientific oeuvre can be found in over 60 Ph.D. theses, 15 patents, and more than 330 peer-reviewed publications. He is the author of books on "Practice in UV/Vis spectroscopy", "Theory and practice in photokinetics", "Photochemical principles of photoresists for circuit boards" and is the Editor of the “Handbook of Spectroscopy”. Many of his early works are cited still today. Who has not read or heard of his seminal review with Jiří Homola on surface plasmon resonance sensors from 1999 with over 4000 citations alone. But also non-tangible experiences can be found throughout the analytical community. At conferences, you may have met the first, second or even third generation of scientists who learned from an expert about the importance of reaching conference buffets early. Select few may also be a proud owner of protocols of the infamous ‘Goethe-Glass’ which is a specially coated glass with higher reflectivity that solved the problem in an especially difficult measurement set-up where too little light reached the detector and clearly ‘more light’ was required.

As mentioned above, when ABC was founded from several existing European analytical chemistry journals, including Fresenius’ Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Günter was selected as one of six founding editors representing the GDCh as one of the owner societies of the journal. From the beginning, Günter has been a dedicated advocate for the journal. During the formative years of ABC, he provided extensive, thoughtful input during the Editors’ numerous discussions on the journal’s content, unique characteristics, and how to improve the quality of manuscripts published. As editors, we all looked to Günter during these meetings for his thoughts and recommendations. His extensive support for the journal is reflected by his more than 70 contributions to ABC including numerous editorials and spotlights articles, as well as over 40 contributions to one of the journal’s predecessor, Fresenius’ Journal of Analytical Chemistry. Regarding editorials, Günter has been the face of ABC in this respect with nearly 30 editorials expressing his insightful opinions and thoughts on numerous timely topics among analytical chemists. He has been one of the strongest advocates for ABC not only in manuscript contributions to the journal but also through regular organization of symposia at scientific conferences, particularly Analytica, sponsored by ABC and focused on presentations promoting the research of ABC authors.

Günter Gauglitz is a giant in analytical and bioanalytical chemistry and all of us at ABC are grateful, thankful and honored that he devoted so much of his time to this special journal, where he never seems to tire of new ideas. Most recently, you can find important insights into future trends of analytical and bioanalytical chemistry in Günter’s ABC Spotlight articles and editorials addressing current thoughts on the nanoworld [1], metal–organic frameworks [2], single-molecule detection [3], the new generation: quantum sensors [4], about the Lab 4.0 [5] and more. He will be greatly missed in our daily editor work, but will certainly continue to receive our phone calls, e-mails, texts or faxes seeking his input, thoughts and insightful opinions (Fig. 1).

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Günter Gauglitz at the Euroanalysis 2017 in Stockholm

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