Professor Sjoerd Harder

Winner: 2020 Main Group Chemistry Award

Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg

For pioneering contributions in the field of s-block metal chemistry, particularly in the area of alkaline earth metal catalysis.

Celebrate Professor Sjoerd Harder

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More serious ambitions to do something in chemistry started at high school with a crazy chemistry teacher, Mr Griffioen, who looked exactly like Mendeleev.

Professor Harder’s work lies in organometallic chemistry, an area that combines organic molecules with metals. Organometallic compounds are so reactive that they burn away with contact in air – not just through oxygen, some react with nitrogen in air, despite this being a gas that is normally fully inert. This reactivity may seem dangerous and unattractive but it also opens up many possibilities, for example applications in synthesizing new molecules or in catalysis – the art of making difficult reactions happen under mild conditions. Most catalysts are, like the platinum catalyst in cars, based on highly precious transition metals. Professor Harder’s mission is to show that cheap and widely available main group metals can also do catalysis, and in some reactions, calcium can replace precious metals. Calcium, which is highly abundant in the white cliffs of Dover, is not just cheap, it is also non-poisonous.

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Professor Sjoerd Harder was born in Kornhorn, a small farming village in the far north of the Netherlands. After studying chemistry at the University of Utrecht he obtained a PhD degree in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Lambert Brandsma (1990, University of Utrecht). His thesis on structure-activity relationships in organolithium chemistry was awarded the H. J. Backer prize. This was followed by several post-doc stays with Paul Ragué von Schleyer (1991, Erlangen, Germany), Andrew Streitwieser (1992, Berkeley, USA) and Hans Brintzinger (1993–1994, Konstanz, Germany). After falling in love with the lake, the mountains and the thriving research in and around the Brintzinger group, he extended his research stay to work on his Habilitation (1995–1998), exploring the chemistry of alkali metal sandwich complexes (the lithocene, sodocene and cesocene anions). As a Privat-Dozent (1998) he started to work on the heavier group 2 metals (Ca, Sr, Ba), elements that at that time were hardly touched by the organometallic community. A cooperation with BASF led to highly reactive alkaline earth metal catalysts for styrene polymerization. In 2004 he became a professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the university of Duisburg-Essen, actively pursuing the goal to exploit group 2 polymerization catalysts in other catalytic transformations.

After offers for full professorships in Konstanz and Groningen, in 2010 he moved to the Netherlands but since 2012 he is back in Germany, leading the Chair of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry at the University Erlangen-Nürnberg.

His current research interests include catalysis with early main group metals, metal hydride chemistry, hydrogen storage, and the interplay between s- and p-block elements for bond activation and catalysis.

Q+A

How did you first become interested in chemistry?

An older brother with a chemistry set and some nice ideas about how to have fun with chemistry. More serious ambitions to do something in chemistry started at high school with a crazy chemistry teacher, Mr Griffioen, who looked exactly like Mendeleev.

What motivates you?

I am motivated by curiosity and the enormous pleasure I get out of discovering the unknown. With all modern equipment around, chemistry feels nowadays like a fast-speed train. With the number and size of publications steadily increasing, it is very hard to keep track of things. This is why we aim to do things that stand out. I would rather invent the new process than do endless spectroscopic measurements to understand it. Of course, we have to spend energy and time on consolidation of new directions but I am always more interested in going there where no one has been before.

Why do you think teamwork is important in science?

I have seen very good examples of team work but also very bad ones – cases where one part just tries to profit from a breakthrough discovery of someone else. The best example of team work I have experienced is within my group. I am very blessed to have a group of co-workers around me that believe in team work. There is generally no competition or jealousy within the group but they all genuinely try to help each other out, either by generating ideas, mutual discussion, or by exchanging ligands or standard reagents.

What is your favourite element?

I think it is good to have a favourite but also think it is highly advisable to keep changing them and maybe even start mixing them. By the way: at the moment Ba (Barium) is my favourite.

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