Obituary Paul Kamer

The Leibniz Institute for Catalysis and the Leibniz ScienceCampus mourn the death of Paul Kamer, an excellent researcher and university teacher, a pioneer in his field. His death deeply shocks us, his colleagues. Almost four years ago, Paul came to Rostock as a renowned chemist, and we were proud to have won him for LIKAT after successful stations in the USA, the Netherlands and Great Britain.

With his expertise in biocatalysis and in the field of artificial metal-enzyme complexes, Paul Kamer opened a completely new field of expertise for LIKAT. LIKAT established a research area specifically for his research: "Bioinspired Homogeneous & Heterogeneous Catalysis".

Paul Kamer was born and spent his childhood in Hilversum, a municipality in North Holland. After high school, he studied in Amsterdam, earned his PhD in Utrecht, went to Caltech in Pasadena as a postdoctoral fellow, and in 1990 returned to the University of Amsterdam. In 2005, Paul moved to the University of St Andrews, Scotland, to further develop his group in homogeneous catalysis.

In 2017, Paul Kamer left the British Isles for LIKAT, in his humorous way he once described himself as the first Brexit refugee.

Paul Kamer's extraordinarily productive research was reflected in some 250 widely cited publications and a number of patents. He was co-editor of CATALYSIS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY and visiting professor at universities in Milan, Eindhoven, Tarragona, Amsterdam and at Caltech. Paul Kamer's death tears a big gap in the life of LIKAT and the Campus. We miss him as a colleague, as a friend and our sympathies go out to his wife Ginie, his family, all his friends.

We remember him with honor.