Professor Ioan SILAGHI-DUMITRESCU (1950-2009)

Abstract

We celebrate in June 2020 70 years from the birth of Professor Ioan SILAGHI-DUMITRESCU. Born in Botiz (Satu-Mare County) on June 1st 1950, he attended primary school in Botiz and high school in the city of Satu-Mare. He went on to receive a B. Sc. degree in Inorganic Chemistry in 1974 from the Faculty of Chemistry of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. Between 1974 and 1977 he worked at the Intreprinderea de Ceramica Fina pentru Constructii Sanex in Cluj-Napoca, and in 1977 he joined the ranks of the Inorganic Chemistry Chair at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Babes-Bolyai University, where he also obtained a PhD degree in Chemistry in 1981. He was promoted full professor in 1994. It was in this position that he provided essential contributions to the modernization and reformation of the Faculty’s curricula, including the transition to the Bologna system and promoting new disciplines of study and new lines of study – including a strong direction in theoretical and computational chemistry. He led the Inorganic Chemistry Chair (1994-2007) and then served as Dean of the Faculty from 2008 to his premature departure on December 25th 2009.

Professor Ioan Silaghi-Dumitrescu’s contributions were in the area of inorganic and organometallic chemistry with transition metals and group 13-15 compounds, including cumulenic and heterocumulenic systems with heavy elements, compounds with catalytic activity, compounds with biological activity. He was among the first researchers in Romania to approach chemistry with computing techniques (computational chemistry), starting with studies on the coordination behavior of organothiophosphoric ligands and evolving towards quantum chemistry. His results on the structure of postransitional-element clusters, organometallic clusters, cumulenic and heterocumulenic systems, nanotubes and calixarenes, were reported in almost 200 articles and are found in journals among the most prestigious across the globe. The majority of his research involved establishing strategies for chemical synthesis, rationalization and prediction of properties for a wide range of inorganic, organometallic, and organic compounds, which were obtained experimentally in his own group as well as in the groups of collaborators from within Romania and from abroad.