Petr Nachtigall
It is with great sadness that we have to communicate the passing of Prof. Dr. Petr Nachtigall, Ph.D. on 28 December 2022.
He was an internationally recognized expert in computational material science with particular
emphasis on porous materials. He received his Ph. D 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 program "Modelling of chemical properties of nano and biostructures".
Recently, he has conceived and organized the establishment of a new Bachelor of Science program
"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).
He is well known for his studies 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. Moreover, the 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.
Prof. Nachtigall was awarded 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 Peter Nachtigall we lose not only an outstanding scientist, teacher and mentor, but also a great
person and friend. Our thoughts are with his wife Gabriela and his family.