Rutger Anthony van Santen is professor at the Institute of Molecular Complexity at Eindhoven Technical University (TU/e, The Netherlands). He received his doctorate as theoretical chemist from Leiden University in 1971. After his initial stay at Shell Research (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), he became professor in Catalysis at the Technical University Eindhoven (The Netherlands) in 1986. In 1993, van Santen was the founding director of the Netherlands Institute of Catalysis and from 2001 to 2005 he was Rector Magnificus of TU/e. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Knight in the order of the Dutch Lion. His research interests are in the field of the molecular aspects of heterogeneous catalysis with the following three main themes: computational studies of surface-chemical reactivity, mechanism in heterogeneous catalysis and physical chemistry of catalyst synthesis.