Professor Dr Karl Wieghardt

Karl Wieghardt has made many important contributions concerning fundamental aspects (electronic structure) of inorganic coordination compounds relevant in biology (e. g. the essential trace elements, like iron, manganese, copper).
He has advanced our understanding of the chemistry of metalloproteins  (metalloenzymes). The work has been carried out at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (1981-1994) and since 1994 at the Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Seminal contributions have been made in the area of non-heme iron containing enzymes (and model complexes thereof) as well as the water splitting manganese cluster in Photosystem II. He has developed and advanced the coordination chemistry of transition metal ions with organic radical ligands.