Peter Schwerdtfeger (born September 1, 1955) is a German scientist. He holds a chair in theoretical chemistry at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, serves as director of the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics, is the head of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, and is a former president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Schwerdtfeger took his first degree in chemical engineering at Aalen University in 1976, after finishing a degree as chemical-technical assistant at the Institute Dr. Flad in Stuttgart in 1973. He studied chemistry, physics and mathematics at Stuttgart University where he received his PhD in theoretical chemistry in 1986. He received a Feodor-Lynen fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to join the chemistry department and later the School of Engineering at University of Auckland in 1987. After a two years research fellowship at the Research School of Chemistry (Australian National University), he returned to Auckland University in 1991 for a lectureship in chemistry.[citation needed] He received his habilitation and venia legendi (Privatdozent) in 1995 from the Philipps University of Marburg. He held a personal chair in physical chemistry for five years until moving to Massey University Albany in 2004, where he established the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics.[citation needed] He became a founding member of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study in 2007.[citation needed] In 2007 he received the Royal Society Australasian Chemistry Lectureship, and was the Källen Lecturer in Physics at Lund University (Sweden) in 2015.[citation needed] From 2017-2018 he was member of the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[citation needed] He has published 350 papers in international journals. He was awarded eight consecutive Marsden awards by the Royal Society of New Zealand.[citation needed]
Schwerdtfeger, P.; Heath, G.A.; Dolg, M.; Bennett, M.A. (1992). "Low Valencies and Periodic Trends in Heavy Element Chemistry. A Theoretical Study of Relativistic and Correlation Effects in Group 13 and Period 6 Hydrides and Fluorides". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 114: 7518. doi:10.1021/ja00045a027.
Schwerdtfeger, P. (2003). "Gold Goes Nano – From Small Clusters to Low-Dimensional Assemblies". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 42 (17): 1892–5. doi:10.1002/anie.200201610. PMID12730967.
Schwerdtfeger, P. (2011). "The Pseudopotential Approximation in Electronic Structure Theory". ChemPhysChem. 2 (17): 3143–55. doi:10.1002/cphc.201100387. PMID21809427.
Hauser, A.; Schwerdtfeger, P. (2012). "Nanoporous graphene membranes for efficient 3He/4He separation". Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 3 (2): 209. doi:10.1021/jz201504k.
Calvo, F.; Pahl, E.; Wormit, M.; Schwerdtfeger, P. (2013). "Evidence for low temperature melting of mercury owing to relativity". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 52 (29): 7583–5. doi:10.1002/anie.201302742. PMID23780699.