Peter Chen, Professor of Physical-Organic Chemistry, will be delivering a farewell lecture to mark his upcoming retirement. Chen is a man with a remarkable history who has played a significant role in shaping ETH Zurich for over thirty years.
Ideas don’t fall out of the sky. According to Peter Chen, anyone who wants to be truly innovative needs to understand the story behind an idea. The chemistry professor, who has spent more than three decades at ETH Zurich, is himself fond of storytelling.
Here’s the story behind his most fascinating research finding: Chen and his team were investigating a novel approach suggesting that certain nitrogen compounds could facilitate new types of reactions. However, they found – much to their dismay – that this research method had already been published in 1960 by future Chemistry Nobel laureate Georg Wittig. But why had this approach faded into obscurity?
Chen spoke with former members of Wittig’s group, which brought surprising information to light: Wittig had inappropriately added himself as co-author to another researcher’s paper and then assigned a doctoral student from his team to check the findings after developing misgivings. The student concluded that the experiment was not reproducible, leading Wittig to blame the original first author and disavow the publication himself in 1964.
According to former group members, the student in question was known to be extremely meticulous when it came to conducting her experiments. This prompted Chen to develop a new hypothesis: Could it be that the original first author, unlike the student who checked his work, had a contaminant in the experiment that had a catalytic effect? Based on this story, Chen’s team was able to demonstrate in 2015 that nickel – one of the possible contaminants – can be employed as a cost-effective and versatile catalyst for facilitating specific reactions. “Intuition in dealing with people is sometimes just as important as understanding molecules,” Chen remarks.
A prodigy at ETH Zurich
Chen was born in Salt Lake City in 1960, completed his chemistry studies in Chicago, quickly rose through the ranks at institutions like Yale and Harvard and was seen as a prodigy of sorts in the field of chemistry. When he was invited to ETH Zurich, he encountered something that he finds compelling to this day: “Unlike in the US, here academics get a kind of ‘academic venture capital’ in the form of basic equipment and resources that come along with their professorship. This lets you test good ideas immediately and then submit proposals after testing their feasibility. This accelerates innovation, and when properly utilised, makes a major contribution to Switzerland’s success.”
Chen joined ETH Zurich in 1994. His wife was expecting their first child, and everything was unfamiliar: the country, the language and the university. To help himself adapt, he turned to Swiss stories, studying German so intensively that he was soon able to read Frisch and Dürrenmatt in the original. Just four years later, he was also teaching in German: “My students have an excellent grasp of English. However, when I speak German, I make shorter and less complicated sentences – which is obviously easier for them.”
Educating Switzerland
Chen was popular among students, and this popularity twice earned him the “Golden Owl” award for excellence in teaching – an honour that is close to his heart. He has trained countless chemists during his three decades at ETH Zurich. Many of them now hold key positions in the Swiss chemical industry. “Considering that the chemical industry comprises around 50% of Swiss exports, Peter Chen has made an essential contribution to the Swiss economy,” says Helma Wennemers, also a professor of chemistry and one of Chen’s long-time colleagues.
What does Chen find so fascinating about chemistry? This is a question that he doesn’t need long to answer. “Chemistry has its own internal logic. In chemistry, we can prove that we understand something by synthesising it. The appeal of chemistry is the ability to transform theories and ideas into something in the material world.”
Serving on the Executive Board – Highlights
Chen’s enthusiasm for turning theory into reality led him to become Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations in 2007. Chen explains: “I had been on various ETH committees for so long that I began developing ideas about how one might run a university and, at some point, I had to find out whether my ideas were correct.”
Many of his ideas succeeded: he was able to expand research funding and continue building ETH’s research infrastructure. Chen negotiated a partnership with IBM, for example, and was an active supporter of computer science professor Markus Gross in founding the Disney Research Lab. Moreover, he successfully concluded the negotiations for the ETH Create 365体育官网_365体育备用【手机在线】 in Singapore.
Chen was also expected to bring an old aspiration to fruition: establishing an ETH site in Basel. Sadly, no department was willing to transfer to Basel. “Then I recalled a request from my time on the ETH Research Commission. Four professors from four different departments had proposed an interdisciplinary initiative – very visionary, but we didn’t have the money for it at the time. But Basel opened up new opportunities,” recalls Chen. The four professorships quickly got on board, and D-BSSE, as we know it today, was born.
Darker hours
In 2009, Chen unexpectedly stepped down from the Executive Board. He had suspicions that scientific data in a 2000 publication from his research group had been falsified. As a co-author, he retracted the publication and asked the Board to conduct a scientific inquiry into the matter.
“Once you realise that something is amiss, the entire world changes,” he says. “It’s a matter of personal integrity. Anyone in this situation who insists on staying in their management role doesn’t have the right characteristics needed to run a university. That’s why I took the best course of action and stepped down.”
It has since become clear that Chen had been intentionally misled. He came to realise that it’s possible to circumvent any system: “A fair and correct result is ultimately always a question of character. Technical expertise alone isn’t enough. We always have to ask ourselves whether someone is trustworthy and can resist the temptation to engage in academic misconduct.”
Always there to help
By being principled and consistent, Chen gained a positive reputation within his department and throughout the university as a whole. He will continue to serve in his post as Integrity Adviser until his retirement. “Peter is not just an exceptionally clever individual with a remarkable memory and impressive intellectual range. He also has a strong sense of justice,” says Wennemers. “He is always there to help with advice and assistance, is polite and full of good, often out-of-the-box ideas. We will miss him greatly in the department.” Peter Chen is an amazing storyteller and has written ETH history.
Farewell lecture
Peter Chen’s farewell lecture, entitled “Chemical Stories”, will take place on 22 October 2025 from 5.15 to 6.30 pm in the Audi Max (HG F30).