Professor Petr Nachtigall died

Professor Petr Nachtigall was an internationally recognized expert in computational material science. He received his  Ph. D. diploma at the University of Pittsburgh. After returning to Prague, he worked at the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, later at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and since 2009 at the Faculty of Science of Charles University. Here he made a major contribution to the establishment and development of the top scientific center "CHARLES UNIVERSITY CENTRE OF ADVANCED MATERIALS" and introduced a new PhD and MSc programme "Modelling of chemical properties of nano and biostructures". Recently, he has conceived and organized the establishment of a new Bachelor of Science programme "Science".

Prof. Nachtigall has regularly published in the most prestigious scientific journals; he is the author of 181 publications with  8 289 citations and an h-index of 54 (as of 1 January 2023).

Among the most important areas of his scientific interest belong:

1) The study of adsorption complexes and reaction mechanisms in zeolites and analogous materials,which significantly contributed to the understanding of the behavior of zeolites for practical applications.

2) Investigation of new types of two-dimensional materials and comparison of their properties with three-dimensional systems, which allowed for the improved understanding of the very interesting properties of these two-dimensional systems.

3) Theoretical understanding of the synthesis of new materials including the prediction of new structures - in this area he has contributed significantly to the discovery and theoretical explanation of a new method of synthesis of zeolites ADOR, thanks to which more than 10 new types of zeolites have already been synthesized. Two of them (the first Czech zeolites) have already been accepted by the structural committee of the International Zeolite Association.

The most important awards of Prof. Nachtigall include the Bedřich Hrozný Prize for Basic Research (2015), the Prize of the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports for significant results of basic research in natural sciences (2019) and the Donatio Universitatis Carolinae (2021).

In Petr Nachtigall we lose not only an outstanding scientist, teacher and mentor, but also a great person.