Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa!

We are delighted to announce that Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, an employee of our Department, has been honored with the highest academic distinction – the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa – by a resolution of the Senate of the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa. The ceremony for awarding the title and the honorary doctorate took place on April 14, 2026, in the Aula Magna of the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa.

Professor – we sincerely congratulate you and wish you continued success!

Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, a world-renowned scientist specializing in polymer chemistry, has been mentioned for several years as a potential winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Born in 1950 in Konstantynów near Łódź, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski is one of the most distinguished contemporary chemists specializing in polymer science and macromolecular engineering. His scientific career—beginning in Poland and developing internationally—led to one of the most important discoveries in chemistry at the end of the 20th century. He graduated from high school in Zelów and then studied at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Lodz University of Technology and at the Petrochemical Institute in Moscow, where he earned a master's degree in engineering in 1972. That same year, he began working at the Center for Molecular and Macromolecular Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Łódź, in the group of Professor Stanisław Penczek. He obtained his doctorate in 1976 based on a thesis on the cationic polymerization of tetrahydrofuran. From 1977 to 1978, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Florida in Gainesville, conducting research on the polymerization of triazolinediones and cyclopolymerization. After returning to Poland, he continued his research on cationic ring-opening polymerization. He obtained his habilitation in 1985 at the Lodz University of Technology. This dissertation, for the first time, correlated the structure of monomers and active sites with their reactivity in cationic polymerization. In the mid-1980s, he began working abroad: first in Paris, then at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he became a full professor in 1993.

From 1994 to 1998, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry at the university, and in 1998, he "inherited" the title of J.C. Warner Professor of Natural Sciences, after Nobel laureate John Pople. In 2004, he was awarded the university's highest academic title, University Professor. At the same time, he maintained ongoing scientific collaboration with institutions in Łódź.

The Professor's breakthrough achievement was the development of the atom transfer polymerization (ATRP) method in 1995. This technique enabled precise control of the molecular weight, architecture, and functionalization of polymers by introducing a mechanism of reversible radical deactivation. This enabled the design of macromolecules with precisely defined parameters – from block and gradient copolymers to star and brush structures. The ATRP method ushered in a new era of macromolecular engineering, today constituting a significant area of ​​nanotechnology and biomaterials. The scale of this discovery is exceptional. Between 1995 and 2024, over 16,000 papers on ATRP were published.

The Professor's scientific achievements include 1,360 publications, 25 books, and over 100 chapters in monographs. The number of citations exceeds 165,000 (Web of Science), and his Hirsch index exceeds 190, demonstrating the global scale of his achievements. Professor Matyjaszewski has supervised over 70 PhDs and collaborated with 150 postdoctoral fellows. He is the co-author of 72 US patents and over 150 international patents, and his ATRP technology has been industrially implemented in the US, Japan, and Europe. His achievements have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2011), the Priestley Medal (2015), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2017), and the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (2023). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the European Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. The awarding of Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa is a tribute to his outstanding scientific achievements, extensive international collaboration, and invaluable contribution to the development of chemical sciences.

The Professor's work has permanently changed the face of modern polymer chemistry, making macromolecular engineering one of the key fields of science in the 21st century.