Grimm, a former winner of the Leibniz Prize, is based at the University’s Mulliken Center for Theoretical Chemistry. The latest survey puts him fifth across all academic and scientific disciplines, up one position from last year. He holds top spot in both the “Chemical Physics” category and the Germany-wide ranking for all subjects.
The study draws on publicly accessible citation data and attempts to measure researchers’ productivity as well as their influence on their field. It considers various bibliometric indicators, including citation frequency, and—unlike other lists—accords a high weighting to publications with just a few authors.
Grimme says: “More than anything, the result reflects the broad international field of application of the quantum chemical methods we’ve developed in Bonn.” For example, his work is helping to improve our understanding of complex chemical problems at the intersection between experiment and theory, something that he achieves through increasingly precise computer simulations of the processes at play inside complex molecules and materials.