Leopold Marcus Lecture -- Palladium-Catalyzed Carbon-Heteroatom Bond-Forming Reactions

Stephen Buchwald, MIT

2015 Marcus Lecture by Stephen Buchwald

Stephen Buchwald, a Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be giving the 26th Annual Leopold Marcus Lecture at Washington University in St. Louis this spring.  With research focusing on catalyst development encompassing organic synthesis, organic physical chemistry, and organometallic chemistry, Buchwald was invited by a committee of Chemistry graduate students to partake in the memorial lectureship.  Recently honored with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences, Buchwald’s work is recognized as having exciting applications for pharmaceutical and agricultural compound synthesis.  The chemistry he has helped develop is also being used in several areas of drug development.

During his time at MIT he has received numerous honors, including but not limited to the American Chemical Society’s Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Chemistry, a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health, and the Gustavus J. Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest.  In 2000 he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 was elected as member of the National Academy of Science.  This past year he was the recipient of the prestigious Linus Pauling Medal Award.  He is the coauthor of over 420 published or accepted papers and 44 issued patents. He currently serves as a consultant to a number of companies and is an associate editor of Advanced Synthesis and Catalysis.

Buchwald’s talk, “Palladium-Catalyzed Carbon-Heteroatom Bond-Forming Reactions,” is intended for a general audience and will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in the Laboratory Sciences Building, Room 300. The lecture is free and open to the public.  He will also deliver a technical lecture, “Copper-Catalyzed Hydroamination,” as part of the lecture series, at 11 a.m. Friday, March 6, in Louderman Hall, Room 458.

About the Leopold Marcus Lecture Series

The Marcus Lecture series was established in 1987 by Jack and Gertrude Marcus, in honor of Jack's father, Leopold Marcus.

Jack Marcus's life and career had a profound impact on the Saint Louis area. After declining a full scholarship at Harvard at the age of 17, he obtained a master's degree in chemistry from the Cooper Union in New York. He moved to Saint Louis in 1948, where Marcus served as a lecturer at nearby colleges and as a pharmaceutical consultant. He went on to found two pharmaceutical companies—Missouri Analytical Laboratories in 1964 and Marcus Research Laboratory in 1974.

Throughout his time in Saint Louis, Jack Marcus was an active member of the Saint Louis section of the ACS, contributing a great deal to promoting the causes of scientific dialogue and education. This lecture series—established three years prior to Jack's death—honors his father, Leopold Marcus. The Leopold Marcus Memorial lecture is unique in that it is organized exclusively by a committee of graduate students, with the speaker being selected via a popular vote of the graduate student body.

To learn more about Marcus Lecture, visit the website: http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/events/marcus_lecture

To learn more about Stephen Buchwald, visit the following website: http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/buchwald/index.html