But remember, N-amino azidotetrazole is the starting material for the work. …It's a base camp, familiar territory, merely a jumping-off point in the quest for still more energetic compounds. The most alarming of them has two carbons, fourteen nitrogens, and no hydrogens at all, a formula that even Klapötke himself, who clearly has refined sensibilities when it comes to hellishly unstable chemicals, calls exciting. …The compound exploded in solution, it exploded on any attempts to touch or move the solid, and (most interestingly) it exploded when they were trying to get an infrared spectrum of it.
— Derek Lowe, Things I Won't Work With: Azidoazide Azides, More Or Less, 9 January 2013

Thomas Matthias Klapötke (born 24 February 1961 in Göttingen) is a German inorganic chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, studying explosives.

Klapötke grew up in Berlin and studied at the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin), completing his undergraduate degree in 1982, his PhD in 1986, and his habilitation in 1990. Klapötke worked as a lecturer at TU Berlin until 1995, when the University of Glasgow hired him for the Ramsay professorship. Since 1997, Klapötke has worked at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) as a professor of Inorganic Chemistry.[1]

Klapötke's lab at the University of Munich is a group of about 30 employees, mainly studying explosives. Klapötke's goal is to generate "green" explosives, that either burn to completion or leave few toxic residues.[2][3] Die Zeit called it "the only university laboratory in Germany investigating implements of war".[2] For this reason, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution watches Klapötke's lab quite closely.[3] Klapötke is funded both by the German federal government and the US military[4] and has won a number of awards, including the 1986 Schering Prize.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Klapötke, Thomas M. "Prof. Dr. Thomas M. Klapötke". Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
  2. 1 2 Albrecht, Harro. "Mann mit Wumm" ["The Man with Boom!"]. Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 19 December 2021. Thomas Klapötke leitet das einzige Hochschulchemielabor in Deutschland, das sich mit Wehrtechnik beschäftigt.
  3. 1 2 "'Ich würde keiner Fliege etwas zuleide tun': Wehrtechnik an der LMU" ["I wouldn't hurt a fly": Implements of war at LMU]. Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). 7 September 2010. Retrieved 8 January 2022. Nicht einmal Klapötkes Mitarbeiter kennen [die Formel]. Dabei werden alle überprüft. Vom Verfassungsschutz und von Klapötke selbst.
  4. ↑ "Pentagon sponsert Sprengstoffforschung in München: Geheimer Krieg" [The Pentagon Sponsors Explosives Research in Munich: Secret war] (in German). 25 November 2013. Retrieved 8 January 2022.


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