On October 4, 2005 we celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the birth of Gu ¨nter Victor Schulz. He was born in Lodz (which was then part of the Russian Empire) and moved to Berlin in 1914. He did his undergraduate studies (''Vordiplom'') in Chemistry at Freiburg and Munich, Heinrich Wieland and Gustaf Mie being among his teachers. By then, he had already developed a strong interest in the philosophical foundations of natural sciences. For his graduate studies he moved to Berlin, where he worked on the thermodynamics of solvation equilibria in colloidal solutions of proteins with Herbert Freundlich at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. He obtained his Ph. D. degree in 1932 and the institute director, Fritz Haber, was his examiner in physical chemistry.
G. V. Schulz chose his field of research, the physical chemistry of macromolecules, after joining Staudinger's group in Freiburg in 1933, when macromolecular science was still in its infancy. His precise experimental and theoretical work contributed significantly to the breakthrough of the concept of macromolecules and to expanding macromolecular chemistry into polymer science as we know it today. His interest moved from natural to synthetic polymers, in particular to the correlation between the mechanisms of polyreactions and the molecular parameters of the macromolecules formed. Excellent examples of his contribution to the characterization of macromolecular compounds are his basic investigations on osmometry and the determination of polydispersity by fractionation. His studies on the kinetics of polymerization gave an insight in the ''genesis'' of macromolecules. In 1936 he discovered that the polymerization of styrene was a radical chain reaction, and he analyzed the elementary steps and calculated the resulting molecular weight distribution. P. J. Flory found that the same distribution was obtained in polycondensation and this is now well known as the Schulz-Flory distribution. Later, Schulz would tell his students that ''the molecular weight distribution is the logbook of the polymerization''. He also maintained an interest in natural polymers like cellulose and their degradation, collaborating with Elfriede Husemann, who would later become the first director of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Freiburg. The inspiring atmosphere in Staudinger's institute also attracted Werner Kern, who later became director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry in Mainz.
In 1936, G. V. Schulz received his ''Habilitation'' degree for ''the complete field of chemistry'' for his work on the determination of molecular weights by osmometry. In 1942,