Hans‐Herbert Schmidtke

Hans-Herbert Schmidtke was a prolific theoretical chemist. His scientific work and life still influences great achievements on ab initio methods.

On January 22, 2023 Hans-Herbert Schmidtke, Professor Emeritus of theoretical chemistry at the University of Düsseldorf, died in a hospital near Erkrath, Germany. He was internationally renowned scientist known for his work correlating highly resolved absorption and emission spectra of coordination compounds with their electronic and geometric structures using ligand field theory.

He started his studies in chemistry at the University of Frankfurt in 1951 where he completed his diploma in 1956. Schmidtke continued his work there as a PhD student under the supervision of Hermann Hartmann, Professor of physical chemistry at the University of Frankfurt. Schmidtke‘s dissertation on „The spin-orbit interaction in the electrostatic theory of complex compounds with an application to the chromium doublet“ which he defended in 1959, along with the work of his colleague Friedrich Ernst Ilse helped create a new field in theoretical chemistry – ligand field theory.

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