Marius Andruh - Chemistry

For more than 30 years, Professor Marius Andruh has developed remarkable activities in inorganic chemistry, coordination chemistry and molecular materials, with a very high quality scientific output, including 259 publications, more than 6700 citations and an h-index of 41.

Photo courtesy of Edupedu.ro / Inquam Photos / Octav Ganea

Career

After his doctoral thesis, which he defended at the University of Bucharest, Romania, in 1988 and a position as an assistant professor at the University of Bucharest, Prof. Andruh was promoted to lecturer in 1990 at the University of Bucharest and embarked on two postdoctoral fellowships. The first (January 1991-January 1992) was carried out at the University of Orsay in the group of Professor Olivier Kahn, and had a significant impact on Prof. Andruh's subsequent career, as it was during this period he discovered the then-emerging field of molecular magnetism, the foundations of which were largely laid by O. Kahn. After this first fellowship, Prof. Andruh went to the University of Göttingen, Germany, with funding from the Humboldt Foundation (February 1992-August 1993) to work with Professor Herbert Roesky, one of the prominent figures in organometallic chemistry. Upon his return to Romania, he was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest in 1994. At the same time, he was also appointed Associate Professor at the University of Quebec in Canada. Finally, in 1996, Prof. Andruh was appointed Full Professor at the University of Bucharest, a position he still holds today. His remarkable scientific qualities led to his election as a member of the Romanian Academy in 2001, where he has served as President of the Chemical Sciences Section since 2009.

Research areas

Prof. Andruh's research revolves around three main areas:

• Crystalline engineering,
• Metallo-supramolecular chemistry,
• and Molecular magnetism.

Regarding the first, Prof. Andruh and his team have developed new synthetic approaches to rationally access coordination polymers with luminescent properties. His deep understanding of coordination chemistry has allowed him to design highly organized molecular architectures using metal complexes as ligands, thus contributing significantly to the development of Metallo-supramolecular chemistry. Among his significant contributions to the field of molecular magnetism, he has synthesized the first trimetallic magnetic molecular chains containing 3d-4f-4d and 3d-4f-5d metals and prepared and characterized numerous polynuclear complexes with interesting magnetic properties, such as irregular spin states, ferromagnetic interactions by spin polarization, and magnetic molecules. His activity in this field has been internationally recognized through his laboratory's involvement in the Molecular Magnetism Excellence Network (MAGMANet) (European Commission, FP6).

Connection to Angers

In 2003, Prof. Andruh made his first visit to Angers as a visiting professor at the University of Angers, which marked the start of a fruitful collaboration with the Moltech-Anjou Laboratory. Two further visits by Mr Andruh as a visiting professor to Angers in 2004 and 2009 consolidated the exchanges between the two universities.

The MOLTECH-Anjou laboratory has had the honour and pleasure of collaborating with Prof. Marius Andruh for several decades, through several formalized collaborations and 17 joint publications. Two of his former doctoral students (A. Madalan and D. Branzea) carried out postdoctoral research in Angers, and C. Maxim completed a thesis in co-tutelage between our two universities.

Prof. Andruh has actively contributed to the work of the "Chemistry" panel of the National Research Agency (ANR) from 2008 to 2013, and again in 2015, and has participated in several theses and HDR juries in France.

The University of Angers awarded Professor Marius Andruh the Doctor Honoris Causa title on January 23, 2018.