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Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
Inorganic Chemistry II - Catalyst Design

Curriculum Vitae

Rhett Kempe was born in Dresden in 1964 and spent his childhood in the beautiful landscapes of Dresden-Pillnitz. He studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig and received his PhD degree in organonickel chemistry under the supervision of J. Sieler in1992 including research stays in Jena (D. Walther) and Stuttgart (H.-G. von Schnering). Rhett Kempe worked as a postdoc with R. R. Schrock at MIT (1992/1993) and with C. Krüger at the “Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung” in Mülheim (1993/1994). After these postdoctoral stays, he started his independent carrier in the Max-Planck Group “Complex Catalysis” led by U. Rosenthal at the “Institut für Organische Katalyseforschung” (IfOK, now Leibniz Institute of Catalysis, LIKAT Rostock). The habilitation thesis (amido metal chemistry) was defended in 1998. He worked as a group leader and lecturer at the IfOK in Rostock and moved as a visiting lecturer to the University of Melbourne in 2000. He became a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oldenburg in 2001 and was appointed to a Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bayreuth in 2002. Rhett Kempe received several offers from other Universities (2006: University of Rostock and the LIKAT and 2010: Humboldt University of Berlin), which were declined. His research interests are catalysis, especially reaction discovery, and homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. He is an author of more than 450 publications, has a h-index of 76, and has received numerous awards. Rhett Kempe was the Head of the Department of Chemistry of the University of Bayreuth from 2004 to 2007, the Dean and Vicedean of the Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences of this University from 2009 to 2015, and a member of the University Council of the University of Bayreuth from 2015 till 2019.