Rudi van Eldik – Kinetics Extraordinaire

Abstract

His parents immigrated to South Africa in 1952 where he completed his school and university education, and earned his PhD degree at the formerly known Potchefstroom University (now the University of the North-West) while working with Professor Jan van den Berg. Thereafter, he worked as post-doc with Professor Gordon M. Harris at SUNY at Buffalo, USA (1972 and 1978) and as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (1977) he joined Professor Hartwig Kelm at the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. At the end of 1979 he moved with his family to Frankfurt am Main, where he completed his Habilitation in Physical Chemistry in 1982. After faculty positions at the Private University of Witten-Herdecke (Full Professor in Inorganic Chemistry 1987-1994), and at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Chair of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry 1994-2010) he retired in 2010, and joined the Faculties of Chemistry of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, where he is still working full time and continuing his research actively. He has published 175 research papers, reviews and monographs in refereed journals during the period after his retirement. Rudi is the recipient of many awards and honors in chemistry, including Honorary Doctor of Science, Potchefstroom University, South Africa (1997), Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Kragujevac, Serbia (2006), Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa (2007), Federal Cross of Merit (‘Bundesverdienstkreuz’) awarded by the Federal President of Germany (2009), Inorganic Mechanisms Award, Royal Society of Chemistry, London (2009), Honorary Doctor of Science, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (2010), Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2010), Honorary Doctor of Science, Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology, Russia (2012) and Alumni Award – Research Category from the North-West University, South Africa (2017). Despite his numerous achievements he has always been a down to earth person with wise and well balanced personality. In many of his award addresses we found Rudi acclaiming the contributions of others including his co-workers and collaborators.