- 2019 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
Intro
Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2019 Wolf Prize in Chemistry for the development of efficient transition- metal catalysts that have revolutionized drug manufacturing, leading to breakthrough in molecule and synthetics design
Education and Work Experience
1990-1992, Postdoc at MIT
2011-Present, Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley
2011-Present, Senior Faculty Scientist and Lead for the LBNL Catalysis Program, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Honors and Awards
2006, ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry
2012, Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences
2018, RSC Centenary Prize
2019, Wolf Prize in Chemistry
Major Academic Achievements
Professor Hartwig's research group focuses on the discovery and understanding of new reactions of organic compounds catalyzed by transition metal complexes and artificial metalloenzymes. Hartwig is known for helping develop the Buchwald-Hartwig amination, a chemical reaction used in organic chemistry for the synthesis of carbon-nitrogen bonds via the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling of amines with aryl halides. These bonds and especially the carbon-nitrogen bonds are immensely important, because such bonds constitute a very basis of medicinal chemistry. Prof. Hartwig and Prof.
Buchwald have pioneered the development of transition metal catalyzed procedures that are broadly applicable and allow carbon-heteroatom bonds of all sorts to be formed with previously unknown efficiency and precision. Their explorations have illustrated the potential of the transition metal-catalyzed construction of important carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom linkages. Profs. Buchwald and Hartwig have profoundly impacted the practice of organic synthesis in general and medicinal chemistry in particular.