Physical organic chemistry: Quo Vadis?
Biography: Daniel Bellus, born in Trnava in 1938, studied chemistry in Bratislava, where he obtained his Ph. D. on a topic dealing with polymer analogous reactions. From 1967 to 1969 he carried out postdoctoral studies at the ETH Zurich with 0. Jeger and K. Schaffner in the field of organic photochemistry. In 1969 he joined Ciba-Geigy, where he is presently Head of Corporate Research Units, thus responsible world-wide for research programmes in selected areas of the chemistry of bioactive compounds, materials, and analytical science. He is the author of 85 publications and holds 48 patents. From 1980 he has lectured at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), and received the Scientific Prize of the City of Basel (1982) and honorary doctorates from the Slovak Technical University (1991) and Comenius University in Bratislava (1992).