Bader Award 2011 Winner

Awarded for outstanding contributions to organic chemistry, including elegant total syntheses and pioneering new synthetic methods of broad use to the community. 

His significant contributions to the synthesis and medicinal chemistry of bioactive natural products and their analogs.

About the Winner

Professor Karl J Hale FRSC obtained a PhD in Carbohydrate Chemistry from King's College London in 1985 under the supervision of Professors Leslie Hough and Anthony C Richardson. 

He then went on to do several years of postdoctoral work in complex natural product total synthesis in Professor Amos B Smith's laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, before joining F Hoffmann-La Roche in Nutley as a Senior Medicinal Chemist. 

In 1990, he returned to the UK to take up a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry at UCL where he was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in 1998.

Professor Hale remained at UCL for 17 years before joining Queen's University of Belfast in July 2007, where he is now Professor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

For his group's significant research achievements in organic synthesis, which have included total syntheses of complex molecules such as (+)-A83586C, (+)-azinothricin, (+)-kettapeptin, bryostatin 7, (-)-agelastatin A, (+)-eremantholide A, and novel reactions such as the O-directed free radical hydrostannation of alkylacetylenes with triphenylstannane/Et3B. 

Professor Hale has been honoured with a number of prestigious awards and named lectureships. These have included:

• 2011 - Bader Award of the RSC
• 2011 - National Science Council of Taiwan Visiting Lectureship of the Chemistry Research Promotion Center
• 2010 - Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Invitation Research Fellowship
• 2007 - Liebig Lectureship of the German Chemical Society
• 1998 - Pfizer Academic Award for Chemistry
• 1997 - Zeneca Research Award in Organic Chemistry

Since 2010 he has been a Member of Council of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland and since 2003 he has also served as an Associate Editor of the premier ACS journal Organic Letters.