The Department of Inorganic Chemistry (DICh) was founded in 1904 as a part of the Koniglische Technische Hochschule Danzig established in Gdańsk during the Prussian Empire (until 1945 the name of the University was changed three times). 

The first head of the department was Prof. Otto Ruff – an outstanding specialist in the field of fluorine chemistry, nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times. In 1945, after the transformation of the German university into a Polish university, the Gdańsk University of Technology, the didactic and research activity of the Department were re-initiated by Prof. Włodzimierz Rodziewicz, a graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology (Ph.D. student of Prof. Stefan Minc and head of the DICh in 1945-1976). 

For many years, the main research topic in the Department was the chemistry of silicon compounds, further developed as the chemistry of silicon-sulfur compounds by Professor Wiesław Wojnowski (Ph.D. student of professor Rodziewicz, head of the DICh in 1989-2003). Since the purchase of the first monocrystalline diffractometer following the initiative of Prof. Wojnowski (1996) structural research has also been intensively developed at the DICh. 

All readers interested in the department's history are invited to read the articles in the history tab as well as the presentation prepared by Prof. Wojnowski in cooperation with a retired DICh employee, a crystallographer Antoni Konitz, M.Sc. Eng. (jubilee lecture on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the birth of professor Wojnowski).

Since 2017, the DICh has been headed by Prof. Anna Dołęga (Ph.D. student of Prof. Jerzy Konopa DDTP, post-doc at the DICh in Prof. Wojnowski's team). 

Several research teams conduct active research at the department:

  • Prof. Anna Dołęga, Dr. Agnieszka Pladzyk, and Dr. Katarzyna Kazimierczuk develop the chemistry of silicon-sulfur compounds and the coordination chemistry of transition metals, derived from research initiated by Prof. Barbara Becker (Ph.D. student of Prof. Wojnowski, head of the DICh in 2009-2017). More...
  • Dr. Rafał Grubba and Dr. Łukasz Ponikiewski investigate the chemistry of the low-covalent phosphorus compounds, initiated at the DICh by Prof. Jerzy Pikies (Ph.D. student of Prof. Wojnowski, head of the DICh in 2003-2009). More...
  • The research group of Prof. Jarosław Chojnacki (Ph.D. student of Prof. Barbara Becker) develops research in the field of structural chemistry, including the analysis of weak intermolecular interactions and the influence of these interactions onto the selected properties of solids. More...

All research groups of the DICh use the instrumental techniques available in the department.

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