Contributions of Professor Pier Giorgio Zambonin to analytical chemistry

On the occasion of his 72nd birthday it is our pleasure to congratulate Professor Pier Giorgio Zambonin for his outstanding scientific achievements and significant contributions to the growth of analytical chemistry. Pier Giorgio Zambonin, born in Castelguglielmo in 1935, received his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Padova in 1959. In 1963 he became assistente ordinario (Assistant Professor) at the University of Bari where he was among the founders of the local “Institute of Analytical Chemistry”. In 1966 he joined the laboratory of Professor Joseph Jordan at the Pennsylvania State University where he spent a three-year period as research associate. In 1971, he received the “libera docenza”, and in 1974 he became Full Professor at the University of Bari and, soon after he became Head of the Institute of Analytical Chemistry, a position held until 1981 when the Institute merged with the newly established Department of Chemistry. He is presently Head of the University Research Centre for Analytical Mass Spectrometry. As a member of the Italian Chemical Society, Pier Giorgio Zambonin was President of the Apulian Section for a total of nine years and President of the Division of Analytical Chemistry for three years. Since 1988 he has served as representative of the Italian Chemical Society in the Working Party for Analytical Chemistry—WPAC (now Division of Analytical Chemistry) of the Federation of European Chemical Societies (now EuCheMS). In 1996 he was Chairman of the ninth edition of the Euroanalysis conference held in Bologna (involving about 1,000 participants from all over the world and more than 900 scientific contributions). On that occasion he was awarded the Sigillum Magnum of the University of Bologna. The accompanying photo shows Professor Pier Giorgio Zambonin at Euroanalyis IX receiving an award of merit from Professor Arnaldo Liberti, dean of the Italian analytical chemists. As a member of the WPAC Study Group on “Education in Analytical Chemistry” he worked on the harmonization of teaching the discipline in European universities (the “Eurocurriculum”), contributing a chapter to the textbook Analytical Chemistry (Kellner R, Mermet J-M, Otto M, Valcarcel M, Widmer HM (eds) Wiley-VCH, Weinheim). The scientific career of Pier Giorgio Zambonin which started with enthalpimetric studies [1] moved soon to the field of molten salts, at that time, an appealing research area with large potential applications in fields such as nuclear energy, fuel cells, refractory metal deposition and heat transfer/storage. In this field Professor Zambonin rapidly became an internationally acknowledged leader creating the well-known Italian school [2]. A complete survey of his contribution to molten salt chemistry (fundamental aspects, electrochemistry, reaction mechanisms, gas–solute interactions, kinetic studies, etc.) would take a review article, so we purposely will focus on a very limited number of issues. Anal Bioanal Chem (2007) 389:2051–2053 DOI 10.1007/s00216-007-1280-5