Piet Van LeeuwenPiet van Leeuwen, born 1942, is a leading expert in homogeneous catalysis with organometallic complexes, supramolecular complexes, and metal nanoparticles. After his PhD in Leyden University in 1967 on coordination chemistry he started his career wit Shell Amsterdam in 1968 and worked on organometallic chemistry and catalysis. He spent one year (1971-2) with Willi Keim in the Shell Development laboratory in California, a stronghold of homogeneous catalysis at the time. Since 1978 he was head of the Shell´s research group “Fundamental aspects of homogeneous catalysis” in Amsterdam. In 1989 he initiated the homogeneous catalysis group at the University of Amsterdam and moved there full-time in 1994. From 2000 till 2005 he was a part-time professor of industrial homogeneous catalysis in Eindhoven and director of the National-Research-School-Combination-Catalysis of the Netherlands. In 2004 he became a group leader in the ICIQ-Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, where his work since 2009 focused on ligand effects in metal nanoparticle catalysis. In 2015 he moved to LPCNO in INSA-Toulouse, continuing a wide range of collaborations. During the 5 years in LPCNO he collaborated with Chaudret´s group “Nanostructures et Chimie Organométallique” advising on catalysis.

He was founding Editor-in-Chief of RSC´s journal Catalysis, Science & Technology which he remained for ten years until 2020. In 2019 he won the Alwin Mittasch Prize, the renown international catalysis award from the German Catalysis Society (GeCatS) and the DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V. honouring “his groundbreaking contributions to the molecular understanding of catalysis using organometallic complexes”. He received two honorary doctorates. He authored, co-authored, and co-edited several books and book series on homogeneous, supramolecular, and nanoparticle catalysis. His book Homogeneous Catalysis, Understanding the Art, 2004, is a classic in the field. Read More Read Less