After an impressive career, Peter Schoenmakers is retiring as professor, leaving behind a highly regarded programme for training analytical chemists.

‘Perhaps half of all chemists advertise themselves as analytical chemists’, begins chromatography expert Peter Schoenmakers. ‘That’s not surprising, because they are everywhere in the industry.’ He should know. He himself worked in industry for some 20 years, followed by another 20 years at the University of Amsterdam. This summer he officially retired as professor of analytical chemistry. But at the end of September his diary is still quite full. ‘Things will slow down soon,’ says Schoenmakers. ‘My PhD students are finishing their projects, I have not taught much in the past year, and I am no longer the project leader in ongoing projects. For the time being, I am still managing the analytical chemistry talent programmes: at bachelor level for higher laboratory education and at master level for academic students. It’s a proper job.’

It is a job that he enjoys very much. ‘It’s fun to be around a lot of young people, especially when they are very committed. And when you get eighty master students, forty of them are just good - but ten are really excellent and enthusiastic, motivating everyone around them. Those are the exceptional ones, the ones you see coming through. And they are definitely not just the ones with the highest grades.’