Thomas M. Klapötke

Thomas Matthias Klapötke (born 24 February 1961) is a German inorganic chemist at LMU Munich, studying explosives.

Klapötke was born in Göttingen; he grew up in Berlin and studied at Technische Universität 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 LMU Munich as a professor of Inorganic Chemistry.

Klapötke's lab at LMU 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. For this reason, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution watches Klapötke's lab quite closely. Klapötke is funded both by the German federal government and the US military and has won a number of awards, including the 1986 Schering Prize. He is also one of the inventors of, and the namesake of the high-performing environmentally friendly high explosive TKX-50, which has higher performances than conventional explosives like RDX and HMX.