Prof. Dr. Dieter M. Kolb is widely known for his work in electrochemistry and atomic nanostructures. He received his undergraduate and PhD training at the Technical University of Munich. He then was a post-doctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories where he studied reflectance spectroscopy of electrodes and adsorbates.
Returning to Germany, he spent twenty years at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, where he developed an international reputation based on his studies of surface plasmons, single-crystal electrochemistry, adsorption, and matrix-isolated atoms and clusters. He was an early adapter of scanning tunneling microscopy to characterize atomically-smooth electrode surfaces. His recent work has continued his emphasis on atomic-level understanding of metal/adsorbate interactions, using numerous sophisticated surface science techniques. His work has been central to the understanding of underpotential deposition, the understanding of electronic states at crystal/solution interfaces, and the understanding of surface reconstruction of single crystals (particularly gold crystals).
Among his many awards are the Electrodeposition Research Award of the Electrochemical Society, the Walther-Nerst Gedenkmünze of the Deutsche Bunsengesellschaft, induction as a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, the David Grahame Award of the Electrochemical Society, the Luigi Galvani Medal of the Italian Chemical Society, and the Faraday Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a former president of the International Society of Electrochemistry.