Sven Harnung died on May 11.
Sven Egil Giersing Harnung was Associate Professor Emeritus at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. His academic home was inorganic chemistry, especially the electronic structure of transition-metal compounds. He worked on ligand field theory, circular dichroism and magnetic circular dichroism, as well as group-theoretical analyses of coordination compounds. His publications range from spectroscopic and theoretical studies with Damhus and Schäffer to a late review article with Erik Larsen on circular dichroism in tris-chelates.
At the same time, Sven had a strong sense of chemistry as a teaching subject. This was reflected in Lærebog i miljøkemi from 1999, and in the English-language Chemistry and the Environment, published by Cambridge University Press, written together with Matthew S. Johnson. Sven said: We don't write a book for the first reading, but for the last”. Sven was also exceedingly fond of experiments, and he gave many demonstration lectures for visiting upper-secondary school classes. He edited several generations of notes for these demonstration experiments and published them as Kemiske forelæsningsforsøg.
He was also a central figure in the life of both the Department of Chemistry and the Danish Chemical Society. He was the last staff-elected head of department at the Department of Chemistry, which allowed for a particularly lively dynamic with his formal superiors in the dean’s office.
For many years, Sven was active in the Danish Chemical Society, including as secretary. He also played an important role in the work surrounding *Acta Chemica Scandinavica*, the Nordic chemical journal which, after 1999, was continued in the journals of the Royal Society of Chemistry. It was characteristic of Sven that the proceeds from the sale should benefit future generations, including through the Danish Chemical Society’s Travel Fund.
Sven’s interest in chemistry extended beyond research and teaching. He wrote articles for *Den Store Danske* and *Lex* on, among other topics, the Danish Chemical Society, *Acta Chemica Scandinavica*, the Royal Society of Chemistry and coordination chemistry. Together with Helge Kragh, he wrote about a chemical walking tour of Copenhagen. Throughout his life, he also retained a particular attentiveness to chemical language, nomenclature and the names of the elements, and until the very end he took part, together with his long-standing colleague Ture Damhus, in the work of the Nomenclature Committee. Like Ture, he was also for several years an IUPAC representative.