Honorary RSC Fellows Lecture: Coupling Chemistry

This lecture is part of a special event taking place on Wednesday 13th June 2012 at the Chemistry Centre in London to celebrate two distinguished individuals who have made a significant contribution to the chemical sciences. In 2010, Royal Society of Chemistry Council invited Professor Suzuki and Professor Negishi to become Honorary Fellows. They were both recognised for their outstanding contribution to the field of synthetic chemistry.

This special event is an opportunity to hear from Professor Suzuki and Professor Negishi, who along with Professor Heck were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on "palladium-catalysed cross couplings in organic synthesis".

Professor Suzuki will give a short lecture on "Receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry", giving his personal insight into how he and colleagues developed the use of palladium as a catalyst for coupling carbon atoms.

Professor Negishi will talk about "Transition Metal Catalysis for a Sustainable and Prosperous World", describing how such a discovery in synthetic chemistry can help us to produce foods, building materials and fuels more sustainably in the future.

Speaker: Akira Suzuki, Professor Emeritus, Hokkaido University

Born in Hokkaido, Japan, Akira Suzuki gained a BSc and PhD in Chemistry from Hokkaido University, and then went into a Postdoctoral role between 1963 and 1965 at Purdue University in America, studying under Professor Herbert C. Brown.

In the field of synthetic organic chemistry his career highlights have included taking up Professorships at Hokkaido University, the Okayama University of Science and Kurashiki University of Science and Arts.

Many awards and honours have been bestowed on Professor Suzuki over his career including receiving the Chemical Society of Japan Award in 1989, the Weissberger-Williams Lectureship Award from Eastman Kodak in 2001 and the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry Japan Special Award in 2004. In 2010 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was awarded the ACS H. C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods in 2011.

Speaker: Ei-ichi Negishi, H.C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Purdue University

Ei-ichi Negishi grew up in Japan and received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Tokyo in 1958. After he obtained his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, he joined Professor H. C. Brown's laboratories at Purdue as a Postdoctoral Associate in 1966 and was appointed Assistant to Professor Brown in 1968.

Negishi went to Syracuse University as Assistant Professor in 1972 and began his life-long investigations of transition metal-catalysed organometallic reactions for organic synthesis. Negishi was promoted to Associate Professor at Syracuse University in 1976 and invited back to Purdue University as Full Professor in 1979.

Over his career he has received many awards and honours, including the 1996 Chemical Society of Japan Award, the 1998 ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry, and in 1999 he was appointed the inaugural H.C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. In 2010 he received the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.