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Professor Horst Kisch awarded with JU honorary doctorate

Professor Horst Kisch awarded with JU honorary doctorate

Distinguished chemist, world-class researcher in the area of photocatalysis and author of internationally recognised books and papers Prof. Horst Kisch has been awarded with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Jagiellonian University. The conferment ceremony took place on 14 April in JU Collegium Maius assembly hall and was presided over by JU Vice-Rector for Research Prof. Piotr Kuśtrowski.

This highest honour of the Jagiellonian University was awarded to Prof. Kisch in recognition of the following accomplishments:

  • extraordinary achievements in the study of the mechanisms of photochemical and photocatalytic reactions with the use of co-ordination compounds and semiconductor materials and, in particular, the processes of photosensitisation of titanium dioxide;
  • pioneering work in the use of heterogeneous photocatalysis in organic synthesis and in the processes of the removal of water and air contaminations;
  • long-time collaboration with the Polish chemists working in the areas of co-ordination chemistry and photocatalysis and also for his great contribution to the development of inorganic chemistry at the Jagiellonian University by means of joint research and scientific traineeships, publications and participation in seminars and conferences.

The honour was bestowed upon Prof. Horst Kisch following a motion put forward by professors from the JU Faculty of Chemistry, who wanted to emphasise the recipient’s extraordinary achievements as an employee of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, both in terms of his scientific accomplishments as well as the forty year-long collaboration between that institution and the Jagiellonian University.

As Dean of the JU Faculty of Chemistry Prof. Wojciech Macyk stressed in his laudatory speech, Prof. Kisch’s extensive research output is known chiefly from his work related to heterogeneous photocatalysis. Prof. Kisch belongs to a small group of the most famous scientists dealing with this subject. He is best known for his pioneering works on the use of heterogeneous photocatalysis in organic synthesis and for the studies of photosensitisation of titanium dioxide to visible light.

The photocatalysts designed by Professor Kisch were commercialised and are currently used as ingredients of photoactive paints, allowing for the removal of odours and volatile organic compounds that are mostly responsible for air pollution. Professor Horst Kisch has written about 225 publications, which altogether have been cited more than 12,000 times. Hiss H-index is currently 51 and he ranks amongst the very best on the recently published list of the 2% world’s best scientists.

Prof Kisch’s collaboration with the Jagiellonian University, which started in the early 1980s, deserves special attention from the Kraków perspective. Since its beginning, a large number of staff and students of the Jagiellonian University have visited Prof. Kisch’s laboratories in Erlangen in order to  carry out short- and long-term research, including three PhD theses, one MSc thesis and one two-year post-doctoral training.

‘I had the honour of meeting Prof. Kisch in 1997, when I started my doctoral research and joined the Professor’s team for a year’s scholarship. Yet it turned out that I spent five beautiful years in Erlangen, where I defended my PhD thesis and had a two-year post-doctoral training. I learned a lot, which was possible thanks to the fact that I was lucky to be a part of Arbeitskreis Kisch. The Professor would always motivate and inspire us, raising our interest in the realm of chemistry, yet he also taught us patience. Perhaps he had learnt that himself while fishing, being a devoted angler. His success is proven not only by his publications, but also by the story of his doctoral and postdoctoral students, six of whom became professors’, Prof. Macyk recalled.

Horst Kisch was born on 31st July 1942 in Bistriţa, Transylvania, and graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna, in 1967. Two year later, he successfully defended his PhD thesis written under the supervision of Prof. Oskar E. Polansky at the same university. In the years 1970–1984, he continued his work at the Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie, Mülheim an der Ruhr. In 1977, he completed his post-doctoral (habilitation) degree at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Dortmund. In 1984, he received a post of a professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he worked until his retirement in 2008.

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