Award Winner

Peter Hupe was born in 1931 in Oldenburg, Germany. He spent his childhood in the cities of Emden, Bremen and Hameln. After college he worked in a practical year at the Wohlenberg Company in Hannover. He then studied mechanical and chemical engineering at the Universities of Braunschweig and Karlsruhe. With a scholarship grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft he performed his PHD-work entitled “Heat Transfer on Horizontal Film-type Coolers” at the Institute of Thermodynamics, University of Karlsruhe. Here in 1959 he became assistant professor.

At that time he began to work together with Ernst Bayer using the method of gas chromatography for the preparative generation of highly pure substances. The high interest in the results of this work and the corresponding instrumentation by chemical companies and research institutes in 1962 led him start his own business with a company called “Dr. Hupe Apparatebau”. The first project was the development and manufacturing of an Automated Preparative Gaschromatograph (APG 402). The 5th Instrument of the first series is still available. It is exhibited in the Museum of Scientific Instruments at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In 1970 Ulrich Busch, who had co-operated with the company since its foundation, joined the company, which then was renamed “Hupe + Busch Company”.

In the early 1960s the company started the development of instrumentation for liquid chromatography under high pressure (high performance liquid chromatography: HPLC), which soon became a highly demanded method in both scientific and industrial laboratories. Peter Hupe at that time was author and co-author of various books and other publications on HPLC.

In 1972 Hupe + Busch Company was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. Peter Hupe was nominated General Manager Analytical Products Division Waldbronn, Germany.

In 1987 Peter Hupe got a call on the chair “Instrumental Analysis” at the Free University of Amsterdam, which he held for the next 8 years. During this time he was active in various scientific committees and a co-editor of a number of scientific journals.