Helmut Schwarz

Helmut Schwarz

Affiliation at the time of the award:

Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

Award citation:

“For quantifying reactive species in the gas phase to solve fundamental problems in catalysis”.

Prize share:

None

Helmut Schwarz (1943, Germany) studied chemistry at the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), earning his Ph.D. in 1972 under Ferdinand Bohlmann and completing his habilitation in 1974. After postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge, he was appointed professor at TUB in 1978. Schwarz served as Vice President of the German Research Foundation (2001–2007), as a President of the German Academy of Researchers Leopoldina (2010- 2015) and as President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2008–2017).
Chemistry first and foremost is concerned with atoms and how they arrange themselves in molecules, but more importantly how the spatial arrangement of atoms impacts their reactivity. As much as chemists tried to access the intrinsic reactivity of atoms, the subject remained elusive until the work of Prof. Helmut Schwarz. Schwarz’s research helps us understand how chemical reactions work at the most basic level, especially those involving metals and gases. His work explains how seemingly unreactive molecules, like methane (natural gas) and carbon dioxide, can participate in chemical reactions. His fundamental discoveries are significant because they can lead to better ways to make fuels, reduce pollution, and even combat climate change. Schwarz developed advanced tools and methods to study these reactions, including powerful techniques in mass spectrometry. These tools allow scientists to observe how atoms and molecules behave during chemical processes, almost like capturing a slow-motion video of the reaction. His research has also helped identify specific parts of catalysts responsible for making these processes efficient. This fundamental understanding has paved the way for designing better, “tailor-made” catalysts used in the chemical industry to produce cleaner energy and chemicals. Helmut Schwarz’s work demonstrated how we can use chemistry to solve immense problems, like creating sustainable energy sources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while deepening our knowledge of how nature works on a molecular level.

Schwarz was the first to uncover the distinct role of electronic structure in selective, metal-mediated, remote C-H bond activation. He demonstrated the existence of genuine catalytic cycles in gas-phase ion chemistry and provided convincing examples of the crucial role of relativistic effects.

From this gas-phase work of “naked” diatomic metal oxides, the “two-state reactivity” concept has emerged, becoming one of the pillars in understanding the intriguing mechanisms of P 450-mediated C-H bond oxygenation. In recent years, his research focused on understanding the selective activation of inert C-H bonds, mainly methane, for an environmentally benign conversion of hydrocarbons into value-added products. He addressed the problem of single-atom catalysis (SAC), a non-trivial challenge in conventional chemistry but much more straightforward in the gas phase, where experiments with mass-selected species under single-collision are unperturbed by solvation, aggregation, the presence of counterions, and other effects. He coupled experimental studies with quantum-mechanical calculations to address questions on how factors such as cluster size and dimensionality, stoichiometry, oxidation state, degree of coordinative saturation, aggregation or charge state affect the outcome of a chemical process.
The DEGUSSA process, which is the large-scale, platinum mediated coupling of Ammonia (NH3) and Methane (CH4) to generate HCN Provides an excellent example of how the group’s mass-spectrometry-based methods impact actual processes. More recently, the Schwarz group was able to generate heteronuclear cluster oxides, which can exhibit the rare feature of both enhanced reactivity and selectivity. Selective “doping” of cluster ions provides a way to direct chemical processes at will, with ion spectroscopy identifying the “aristocratic atoms” in the active site of a catalyst. These studies open a widely uncharted territory of chemistry where each atom counts.