Prof. em. Dr. Dieter Seebach

Dieter Seebach was Full Professor at the Organic Chemistry Laboratory of the ETH Zurich, starting 1977. He retired on March 31st, 2003.

Dieter Seebach was born in 1937 in Karlsruhe, Germany. He studied chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe and completed his dissertation on small ring compounds and peroxides under R. Criegee in 1964. After having spent two years as postdoc under E.J. Corey and lecturer at Harvard University, he returned to Karlsruhe and earned habilitation in 1969 with a thesis on S and Se stabilized carbanion and carbene derivatives. In 1971 he was called to the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and in 1977 to the ETH Zurich. He has been a guest professor at the Universities of Madison, Strasbourg, Munich (TU), Kaiserslautern, Frankfurt and at Caltech, Pasadena, as well as at the Max Planck Institute in Mulheim. His work focuses on the development of new synthesis methods; production and secondary structure examination of beta peptides; the synthesis of oligomers in (R)-3 hyrdroxybutyric acid and the respective biopolymers as well as their application possibilities; the synthesis of chiral dendrimers and the use of chiral titanates in organic synthesis.

Memberships: Member of the New Swiss Chemical Society and comparable associations in Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the USA. German Academy of Natural Science Research Leopoldina and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, and elected member of the Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften (SATW).