Department of Chemistry Seminar Announcement

1. Department of Chemistry Seminar Announcement About the Speaker His primary research interests are in the invention of new synthetic reactions and the origin of stereocontrol in fundamental carbon-carbon bond forming reactions. The current emphasis in his laboratories centers on the relationship between structure, reactivity and stereoselectivity in a variety of organo-element systems and the concept of Lewis base activation of Lewis acids. Abstract Catalysis is a chemical evergreen. Ever since Michael Faraday first recognized that platinum wire could bring about the combination of hydrogen and oxygen with spectacular speed, chemists have been fascinated with the origins, principles, scope and applications of catalysis. Despite Berzelius’s unfortunate choice of the word for this phenomenon (from the ancient Greek for destruction), the field of chemical (abiological) catalysis has grown immensely in the past century. Surprisingly, however, catalysis of reactions of the p-block (main group) elements is almost non-existent. Over the past decade, my group has investigated reactions based on elements in Groups 14, 16 and 17, under the newly developed paradigm of “Lewis-base activation of Lewis acids”. This lecture will describe the most recent efforts in our laboratories to design, understand and apply synthetically useful reactions of the halogens and the chalcogens under catalysis by Lewis bases. Professor Scott Denmark obtained his B.Sc degree from M.I.T. in 1975 and D. Sc. Tech degree from the ETH-Zürich in 1980. That same year he was appointed as assistant professor at the University of Illinois. He was promoted to associate professor in 1986, full professor in 1987 and then in 1991 named the Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. All are Welcome