MASATAKE HARUTA, Ph.D.

 

Professor, Department of Applied Chemistry

Graduate School of Urban Environmental Sciences

Tokyo Metropolitan University

 

Masatake Haruta was born in 1947. He obtained a B.S. degree from Nagoya Institute of Technology in 1970, and a Doctor of Engineering from Kyoto University in 1976 working with professor Nobuatsu Watanabe on electrochemical fluorination. He began his independent career at Osaka National Research Institute (ONRI), Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in 1976 and was involved in the catalytic combustion of hydrogen. From October of 1981 he stayed for one year at Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium with professor Bernard Delmon and studied preparation of homodisperse metal sulfides. After returning to ONRI he initiated research on gold catalysis. In 1990, he was promoted to head of catalysis section and in 1999 to director of department of energy and the environment. In 2001, he was appointed the director of Research Institute for Green Technology, AIST at Tsukuba. In April of 2005, he moved to Tokyo Metropolitan University as full professor. He now directs a research group of 20-25 staffs, postdocs, and students. He was invited to the Technical University of Vienna as a guest professor in May of 1994 for three months. He was also appointed adjunct professor of Graduate School of Science at Osaka University from 1994 to 2005. He serves as the president of Catalysis Society of Japan since April 2011.

 

Masatake Haruta’s research interest centers on the novel catalysis by gold nanoparticles and clusters. Gold in bulk had been regarded as being poorly active as a catalyst, while he found in 1982 that gold turned out to be surprisingly active when deposited on base metal oxides as nanoparticles smaller than 5 nm in diameter. The awards Haruta received include 44th Chemical Technology Award from Kinki Chemical Society, 15th Osaka Science Prize (1997), Presidential Award for Distinguished Research Achievement from the Science and Technology Agency of Japan (1998), Science Award from Catalysis Society of Japan (2002), Henry J. Albert Award from International Precious Metals Institute (2002), and the Chemical Society of Japan Award (2010). He was elected as a Foreign Member of Academia Europaea in 2009.