Inorganic Chemistry in Germany

Rudi van Eldik was born in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 1945 and grew up in Johannesburg (South Africa). He received his chemistry education and DSc degree at the former Potchefstroom University (SA), followed by post-doctoral work at the State University of New York at Buffalo (USA) and the University of Frankfurt (Germany). After completing his Habilitation in Physical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt in 1982, he was appointed as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Private University of Witten/Herdecke in 1987. In 1994 he became Professor of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, from where he retired in 2010. At present he is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and Visiting Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the N. Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. His research interests cover the elucidation of inorganic and bioinorganic reaction mechanisms, with special emphasis on the application of high pressure thermodynamic and kinetic techniques. In recent years his research team also focused on the application of low-temperature rapid-scan techniques to identify and study reactive intermediates in catalytic cycles, and on mechanistic studies in ionic liquids. He is Editor of the series Advances in Inorganic Chemistry since 2003. He serves on the Editorial Boards of several chemistry journals. He is the author of over 880 research papers and review articles in international journals and supervised 80 PhD students. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from the former Potchefstroom University, SA (1997), Kragujevac University, Serbia (2006), Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (2010), University of Pretoria, SA (2010), and Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology, Russia (2012). He has developed a promotion activity for chemistry and related experimental sciences in the form of chemistry edutainment presentations during the period 1995-2010. In 2009 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (‘Bundesverdienstkreuz’) by the Federal President of Germany, and the Inorganic Mechanisms Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry (London). His hobbies include music, hiking, jogging, cycling and motor-biking. He is the father of two and grandfather of four children. Prof. Dr. Karsten Meyer, FRSC, studied chemistry (October 1989 – 1994) at the Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany) and received his Diploma in May 1995. Starting in summer 1995, he performed his PhD thesis work under the direction of Professor Karl Wieghardt at the Max-Planck-Institute in Mülheim / Ruhr (Germany) and received his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat, summa cum laude) in January 1998. With a DFG postdoctoral fellowship, Karsten proceeded to gain research experience in the laboratory of Professor Christopher Cummins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998 – 2000, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA). In January 2001, he was appointed to the faculty of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) as an Assistant Professor and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2004. In 2006, he accepted an offer (C4/W3) to be the Chair of the Institute of Inorganic & General Chemistry at the Friedrich-AlexanderUniversity of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany. Prof. Meyer has published 275+ publications in peer-reviewed journals, leading to an h-Index of 61 with a total of 11,000+ citations, and an average citation per item of 40+. The list of publications includes, among others, reports and articles in Science, Nature, Nature Chem., Chem, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, and Chemical Science. He has given more than 200 invited talks, including opening and plenary lectures, at conferences as well as research and academic institutions worldwide.