Henri Kagan HonFRSC

Henri Kagan HonFRSC
Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d'Orsay, France

Biography

Henri B. Kagan was born in 1930 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. After graduating from the Sorbonne and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris, he joined the group Prof. J. Jacques for PhD thesis in Collège of France. Later he became research associate with Prof. A. Horeau. Finally he moved to Université Paris-Sud, Orsay in 1967 where he is presently emeritus Professor (since 1999).

He has broad research interests, such as asymmetric synthesis, asymmetric catalysis or lanthanide reagents (for example diiodosamarium). He developed in the early seventies the first examples of chiral diphosphines as ligands of rhodium catalysts for enantioselective hydrogenation and of the use of circularly polarized light in asymmetric synthesis. More recently he introduced the concept of nonlinear effects in asymmetric catalysis. He is presently studying some aspects of asymmetric amplification, of kinetic resolution and of asymmetric catalysis.

His awards include the Prelog Medal, the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann Medal, the Nagoya Medal of Organic Chemistry, the Yamada Medal, the Tetrahedron Prize, the Silver Medal of the Centenary lecturer award of RSC, the Wolf Prize (shared with R. Noyori and K. B. Sharpless), the Grand Prix de la Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie (shared with H. Yamamoto), the Ryoji Noyori Prize, the Bower Award of Franklin Institute and the Horst-Pracejus Prize . He is member of the French Academy of Science.