Homogeneous Catalysts – Activity – Stability – Deactivation

Piet van Leeuwen is group leader in the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, Tarragona, Spain, since 2004 and emeritus professor of homogeneous catalysis at the University of Amsterdam. Until 1994 he headed a research group at Shell Research in Amsterdam studying many aspects of homogeneous catalysis. He coauthored 300 publications, 30 patents, many book chapters, is author of the book "Homogeneous catalysis: Understanding the art". In 2005 he won the Holleman Prize (for organic chemists), granted only every five years by the Royal Academy, and obtained a Marie Curie Chair of Excellence in Tarragona. John Chadwick is employed by LyondellBasell Industries and since 2001 has been on secondment at Eindhoven University of Technology, where he is programme coordinator for Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI) projects on polymer catalysis and immobilization. Until 1995, he was at Shell Research in Amsterdam, after which he transferred to the LyondellBasell (at that time Montell, later Basell) research center in Ferrara, Italy, where he was involved in fundamental Ziegler-Natta catalyst R&D. His main research interests involve heterogeneous olefin polymerization catalysis, including Ziegler-Natta and immobilized single-site systems. He is author or co-author of more than 60 publications and 11 patents.