It is with great sadness that we have learned that Professor Eric Derouane passed away on 17 March in his home at Luz Lagos (Algarve) Portugal.
Professor Derouane will be remembered by his students and colleagues, both in industry and academia, for his creative leadership of the Namur and Liverpool catalysis laboratories and for his mentorship of many colleagues and students..
Professor Derouane was world renowned for his many contributions in catalysis for petrochemicals and fine chemicals, particularly for his work on zeolites and their role in catalytic processes and the use of in-situ methods for catalyst characterization.
Professor Eric G. Derouane obtained in 1968 his MSc in Chemistry at Princeton University and his Dr.Sc. at the University of Liège. He then became a Research Associate of FNRS (Belgium). In 1973, he was appointed as Professor at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix (FUNDP) in Namur, Belgium, where he created the Laboratory of Catalysis. In 1995, he was invited as Full Professor and Director of the Lervehulme Centre for Innovative Catalysis at the University of Liverpool. Eric G. Derouane became Professor at the University of Faro, Portugal in 2003.
His contributions to catalysis have been recognized by the Ciapetta Lectureship of the North American Catalysis Society (1981), the Catalysis Lectureship of the Société Chimique de France (1993), and the 1994 Francqui Prize. He was a Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular Catalysis A, and past President of the European Federation of the Catalysis Societies (EFCATS) 1995–1997.
With kind regards,
Miche Che, Fernando Ramoa Ribeiro and Jacques C. Védrine