For the period of 2014-2015 there were three prize candidates nominated, Dr. ir. Emanuela Negro who did her PhD in Delft, Dr. Mark Vis who completed his PhD in Utrecht and Dr. Bart Limburg who did his PhD in Leiden. These three nominees worked on very diverse fields and all three made significant contributions to their respective fields. It was not an easy task for the reviewers to make a decision and one of them would have preferred to award the prize to all three simultaneously. There was only a slight preference for one of the candidates and on the basis thereof the committee decided to award the prize to Dr. Bart Limburg.
His thesis work was on the topic of Photocatalytic redox reactions at the surface of liposomes which in actual fact is a relatively classical topic. However, Dr. Limburg managed to bring systematics into this field that so far had not been seen. Therefore, just his literature review on this topic already has a significant impact. Furthermore, his investigations on the reaction kinetics not only contributed to this field but also beyond. Clearly, his work is quite in the line of Van Arkel’s systematic approaches and we expect him to contribute even more significantly to the field of physical and inorganic chemistry.
Dr. Limburg only graduated very recently and not all publications have been sufficiently long in the open to assess their impact. His strong point has been to address the phenomena from a fundamental point of view by specifically analysing the kinetics in a way that certainly deserves more attention but at this moment of time is not that “popular” (in general, chemists do not seem to like math). His sound results are that convincing that they are expected to attract serious attention to his way of analysis. This embodies his own contribution and independency in design and performance of research and at the same time his clear vision on how to attack current problems in the field.
It is therefore, that the selection committee decided to award the KNCV - Van Arkel prize for the period of 2014-2015 to Dr. Bart Limburg and we congratulate him with this honour. Congratulations also to his family and friends, and may it serve as a stimulation to perform excellent research in the future and inspire young researchers to do likewise.
The selection committee for the KNCV - Van Arkel Prize for Physical and Inorganic Chemistry:
Dr. ing. G.J.M. Koper, chair
Dr. W.G. Haije
Prof. dr. A.P. Philipse
with reviewers
(Em.) Prof. dr. M.C. Cohen Stuart
(Em.) Prof. dr. W.J. Briels
(Em.) Prof. dr. J. Schoonman
