Frank Günther Neese - Biography#
Frank Neese received both his Diploma (Biology – 1993) and Ph.D (Dr. rer. Nat. – 1997) working with Prof. P. Kroneck at the University of Konstanz in the department of biology. He performed postdoctoral work at Stanford University with Prof. E. I. Solomon from 1997 to 1999 before returning to Konstanz to complete his Habilitation in "Bioinorganic and Theoretical Chemistry" in 2001.
He joined the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Bioinorganic Chemistry in 2001 as a group leader until accepting the position of full Professor and Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Bonn in 2006. In 2008, Neese returned part time to the MPI as one of its rare “Max Planck Fellows”. In 2011, he became Director of the MPI for Chemical Energy Conversion, where he headed the Department of Molecular Theory and Spectroscopy. As of 2018, he moved the department to the neighboring MPI für Kohlenforschung. Frank Neese received numerous national and international awards including the Gottfried-Wilhelm Leibniz award of the German Science foundation.
In 2013, he was inducted into the Leopoldina (German National Academy of Sciences). He is associate editor of the journal Inorganic Chemistry and serves on the advisory boards of several international institutions, including the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He also serves on the central referee panel of the German Science foundation where he is responsible for Theoretical Chemistry. Frank Neese is the author of more than 500 scientific articles in journals of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics.
His work focuses on the Theory of Magnetic Spectroscopies (electron paramagnetic resonance, magnetic circular dichroism) and their experimental and theoretical application, local pair natural orbital correlation theories, spectroscopy oriented configuration interaction, electronic and geometric structure and reactivity of transition metal complexes and metalloenzymes. He is lead author of the ORCA program, which is currently the second most widely used quantum chemistry program world-wide.
