Schwarzenbach René

Biography

Prof. em. René Schwarzenbach is presently president oft the platform „Science and Policy“ (SAP) of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences (ScNat), and president oft he board oft he „International Sustainable Campus Network“ (ISCN). He is also a permanent guest of the scientific advisory board of the Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany. After his retirement in January 2011, he served as head and delegate of the steering board of the competence centre of environment and sustainability (CCES) of the ETH domain (until 2016), and as Associate Vice President for Sustainability at ETH Zurich (2011-2014). Before his retirement, René P. Schwarzenbach was a full professor of Environmental Chemistry in the Department of Environmental Sciences (D-UWIS), presently the Department of Environmental Systems Science (D-USYS), at ETH Zurich. Between 2004 and 2010 he served as department head of D-UWIS. Between 2001 and 2010 he was also a scientific councilor and since 2006 president of division IV of the Swiss National Science Foundation, and between 2005 and 2016 member oft the councel of the University of Konstanz in Germany. Born in December 1945, René Schwarzenbach earned his diploma degree in 1970 from the Chemistry Department at ETH Zurich where he also got his PhD in 1973. He spent two postdoctoral years at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA). In 1977, he accepted a position at the EAWAG, where he headed the department for interdisciplinary limnological research for several years and also served on the board of directors until April 2005. In 1984, he completed his habilitation at ETH Zurich, where he was elected as full professor in 1989. In 1992, he was awarded the Körber Prize, together with four colleagues from Germany, France and Switzerland. In 2000, he was elected as an original member of the ISI Highly Cited Researchers Database, and he won the SETAC Environmental Education Award in 2001 and the Award for "Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology" of the American Chemical Society in 2006.

Research Interest

The research, teaching, and consulting activities of his group focused primarily on the distribution, fate and effects of organic pollutants in the natural environment. The research addressed fundamental chemical as well as multidisciplinary system-oriented aspects. In his teaching, he aims to build bridges between the molecular world and macroscopic systems. His textbook "Environmental Organic Chemistry" that he authored together with two colleagues from MIT and ETH Zurich, and that won the "Chemistry Book of the Year Award" of the Association of American Publishers in 1994, has established itself as the standard text in the field of environmental organic chemistry. The third, completely revised edition of the book has appeared in November 2016