Alfred Benninghoven

Benninghoven graduated from the University of Cologne in 1961 where he worked with Fritz Kirchner (1896–1967) and completed his habilitation in surface physics in Cologne two years later.^[2] He first worked as professor in Cologne from 1965 to 1973 until he moved to a full professor position in experimental physics at the University of Münster in 1972.^[2] He worked on static secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and its applications, and developed SIMS instruments. In 1989 he co-founded IonTOF, a company that became a world-leader in TOF-SIMS instrumentation.^[2] He has written over 300 scientific articles and several books on the topic of SIMS, many of which have become reference works on SIMS.^[2]

For his work, he has received the Technology Transfer prize (German Ministry of Education and Research) and the 1984 Gaede-Langmuir Prize (American Vacuum Society) for the development of concepts and instrumentation in static secondary ion mass spectrometry and the demonstration of its usefulness in manifold applications.^[3] In 1990 he shared the Fritz-Pregl-Medaille of the Austrian Society of Analytical Chemistry with Wilhelm Simon. From 1977 to 1983, he was president of the German Vacuum Society (part of the German Physical Society).