The Background of an Ozone Researcher: A Brief Autobiography

I was born in Amsterdam on December 3, 1933, the son of Anna Gurk and Jozef Crutzen. I had one sister. My mother’s parents moved to the industrial Ruhr region in Germany from East Prussia towards the end of the 19th century. They were of mixed German and Polish origin. In 1929 at the age of 17, my mother moved to Amsterdam to work as a housekeeper. There she met my father. He came from Vaals, a little town in the south-eastern corner of the Netherlands, bordering Belgium and Germany and very close to the historical city of Aachen. He had relatives in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. Thus, from both parents I inherited a cosmopolitan view of the world. Despite having worked in several countries outside the Netherlands since 1958, I have remained a Dutch citizen.