Prof. em. Dr. Willem H. Koppenol

Willem H. Koppenol joined the ETH Zurich in 1994 as full Professor; presently his research interests are: Kinetics and thermodynamics of radical reactions that are of biological interest, reactivity of nitrogen oxides, peroxynitrite and peroxides in general, metal binding properties of superoxide dismutase.

W. H. Koppenol was born in the Netherlands in 1949. He studied chemistry at the University of Utrecht, obtained a master's degree in inorganic chemistry and geochemistry in 1974 and finished his studies with a doctoral degree in radiation chemistry in 1978. He then joined the group of Professor E. Margoliash at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he studied electrostatic properties of proteins, in particular cytochrome c and superoxide dismutase. From the end of 1981 until the summer of 1987 he worked as assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. There he continued his research on electrostatic properties of proteins and started to investigate the kinetic and thermodynamic properties of inorganic radicals. In 1983 he received the Iron Bolt Award for his research on the thermodynamic feasibility of radical reactions. In 1987 he was appointed associate professor at the Department of Chemistry of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he continued his investigations of reactions that involve radicals.

From 1990 until the end of 1997, Prof. Koppenol was a member of the IVPAC Commission on the Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry; the last four years he served as Secretary. Currently, he is a member of the editorial boards of Redox Reports Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Chemical Research in Toxicology and Helvetica Chimica Acta.