Roeland Nolte - Biography#

Roeland J. M. Nolte was born in Bergh, The Netherlands and studied at the University of Utrecht, where he investigated the metal catalyzed polymerization of isocyanides and discovered the first example of atropisomerism in polymers. He received a Ph.D in Physical Organic Chemistry in 1973. During a post-doctoral stage in the group of Nobel laureate Donald J. Cram at the University of California at Los Angeles he was introduced to the fields of Host-Guest Chemistry and Supramolecular Chemistry, which became one of his main research interests when he joined the Science Faculty of the University of Utrecht, first as an Assistant Professor and later as an Associate Professor (1979). In 1987, he moved to the University of Nijmegen as a Full Professor of Organic Chemistry, and since 1994 he has also been an Adjunct-professor of Supramolecular Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology. In 2002 he became Director of the Institute for Molecules and Materials at the Radboud University Nijmegen.

After his retirement from the chair of Organic Chemistry at Radboud University in 2010 he received a Personal Royal Netherlands Academy of Science Chair in Molecular Nanotechnology. Roeland Nolte is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science and the Royal Belgian Academy of Science. His contributions to science have been recognized with numerous award lectureships and several national and international prices including the Izatt-Christensen Award for Excellence in Macrocyclic Chemistry, the first Royal Netherlands Academy of Science Chair in Chemistry, and a knighthood in 2004. He has served on the editorial boards of many scientific journals, including the journal Science (Washington) and the RSC journal Chemical Communications (as Chairman). His research interests span a broad range of topics at the interfaces of Supramolecular Chemistry, Macromolecular Chemistry, and Biomimetic Chemistry. In his work he focuses on the design of catalysts and (macro) molecular materials. He and his group have published over 650 scientific papers, book chapters and patents.