Andreas Pfaltz

Last updated
Andreas Pfaltz
Born (1948-05-10) 10 May 1948 (age 75)
Basel, Switzerland
Alma mater ETH Zurich
Known for chiral ligands, coordination chemistry and catalysis
AwardsPracejus Prize (2003)
Prelog Medal (2003)
Ryoji Noyori Prize (2008)
Chirality Medal (2016)
Scientific career
Fields Chemistry
Institutions University of Basel
Max Planck Institute for Coal Research
ETH Zurich
Thesis  (1978)
Doctoral advisor Albert Eschenmoser
Website chemie.unibas.ch/en/persons/andreas-pfaltz/

Andreas Pfaltz (born 10 May 1948) is a Swiss chemist known for his work in the area of coordination chemistry and catalysis.

Contents

Education and professional life

Andreas Pfaltz studied at ETH Zurich, completing his undergraduate diploma in natural sciences in 1972 and his PhD in organic chemistry in 1978. His doctoral supervisor was Albert Eschenmoser, whose research into vitamin B12 and other corrin rings would influence Pfaltz's early research. [1] Following a two-year postdoctoral position at Columbia University (early 1978 – late 1979), working for Gilbert Stork on the synthesis of Rifamycin, [2] he returned to ETH Zurich as a lecturer and began his own research. In 1990 he was appointed as an associate professor at the University of Basel, becoming a full professor in 1993. Between 1995 and 1998 he was a director of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, afterwards returning to the University of Basel, where he has remained till the present day.

Research

Pfaltz's early research was influenced by his PhD supervisor Albert Eschenmoser and was largely based around the synthesis of corrins, [3] porphyrins [4] and other macrocycles. During the second half of the 1980s he began to use fragments of these macrocycles as novel ligands for asymmetric catalysis, with chiral C2-symmetric semicorrins being the most successful example. [5] [6] Following the development of structurally related bis(oxazoline)s Pfaltz began using and developing various oxazoline based ligands, making significant contributions to the known chemistry of phosphinooxazolines. [7] [8] His current research activities remain focused on ligand development, asymmetric catalysis and catalyst screening.

Professional appointments

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corrin</span> Chemical compound

Corrin is a heterocyclic compound. Although not known to exist on its own, the molecule is of interest as the parent macrocycle related to the cofactor and chromophore in vitamin B12. Its name reflects that it is the "core" of vitamin B12 (cobalamins). Compounds with a corrin core are known as "corrins".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enantioselective synthesis</span> Chemical reaction(s) which favor one chiral isomer over another

Enantioselective synthesis, also called asymmetric synthesis, is a form of chemical synthesis. It is defined by IUPAC as "a chemical reaction in which one or more new elements of chirality are formed in a substrate molecule and which produces the stereoisomeric products in unequal amounts."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atropisomer</span>

Atropisomers are stereoisomers arising because of hindered rotation about a single bond, where energy differences due to steric strain or other contributors create a barrier to rotation that is high enough to allow for isolation of individual conformers. They occur naturally and are important in pharmaceutical design. When the substituents are achiral, these conformers are enantiomers (atropoenantiomers), showing axial chirality; otherwise they are diastereomers (atropodiastereomers).

In chemistry, transfer hydrogenation is a chemical reaction involving the addition of hydrogen to a compound from a source other than molecular H2. It is applied in laboratory and industrial organic synthesis to saturate organic compounds and reduce ketones to alcohols, and imines to amines. It avoids the need for high-pressure molecular H2 used in conventional hydrogenation. Transfer hydrogenation usually occurs at mild temperature and pressure conditions using organic or organometallic catalysts, many of which are chiral, allowing efficient asymmetric synthesis. It uses hydrogen donor compounds such as formic acid, isopropanol or dihydroanthracene, dehydrogenating them to CO2, acetone, or anthracene respectively. Often, the donor molecules also function as solvents for the reaction. A large scale application of transfer hydrogenation is coal liquefaction using "donor solvents" such as tetralin.

Bis(oxazoline) ligands (often abbreviated BOX ligands) are a class of privileged chiral ligands containing two oxazoline rings. They are typically C2‑symmetric and exist in a wide variety of forms; with structures based around CH2 or pyridine linkers being particularly common (often generalised BOX and PyBOX respectively). The coordination complexes of bis(oxazoline) ligands are used in asymmetric catalysis. These ligands are examples of C2-symmetric ligands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Eschenmoser</span> Swiss organic chemist

Albert Jakob Eschenmoser (born 5 August 1925) is a Swiss organic chemist, best known for his work on the synthesis of complex heterocyclic natural compounds, most notably vitamin B12. In addition to his significant contributions to the field of organic synthesis, Eschenmoser pioneered work in the Origins of Life (OoL) field with work on the synthetic pathways of artificial nucleic acids. Before retiring in 2009, Eschenmoser held tenured teaching positions at the ETH Zurich and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California as well as visiting professorships at the University of Chicago, Cambridge University, and Harvard.

Asymmetric hydrogenation is a chemical reaction that adds two atoms of hydrogen to a target (substrate) molecule with three-dimensional spatial selectivity. Critically, this selectivity does not come from the target molecule itself, but from other reagents or catalysts present in the reaction. This allows spatial information to transfer from one molecule to the target, forming the product as a single enantiomer. The chiral information is most commonly contained in a catalyst and, in this case, the information in a single molecule of catalyst may be transferred to many substrate molecules, amplifying the amount of chiral information present. Similar processes occur in nature, where a chiral molecule like an enzyme can catalyse the introduction of a chiral centre to give a product as a single enantiomer, such as amino acids, that a cell needs to function. By imitating this process, chemists can generate many novel synthetic molecules that interact with biological systems in specific ways, leading to new pharmaceutical agents and agrochemicals. The importance of asymmetric hydrogenation in both academia and industry contributed to two of its pioneers — William Standish Knowles and Ryōji Noyori — being awarded one half of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oxazoline</span> Chemical compound

Oxazoline is a five-membered heterocyclic organic compound with the formula C3H5NO. It is the parent of a family of compounds called oxazolines, which contain non-hydrogenic substituents on carbon and/or nitrogen. Oxazolines are the unsaturated analogues of oxazolidines, and they are isomeric with isoxazolines, where the N and O are directly bonded. Two isomers of oxazoline are known, depending on the location of the double bond.

Organogold chemistry is the study of compounds containing gold–carbon bonds. They are studied in academic research, but have not received widespread use otherwise. The dominant oxidation states for organogold compounds are I with coordination number 2 and a linear molecular geometry and III with CN = 4 and a square planar molecular geometry.

The total synthesis of the complex biomolecule vitamin B12 was accomplished in two different approaches by the collaborating research groups of Robert Burns Woodward at Harvard and Albert Eschenmoser at ETH in 1972. The accomplishment required the effort of no less than 91 postdoctoral researchers (Harvard: 77, ETH: 14), and 12 Ph.D. students (at ETH) from 19 different nations over a period of almost 12 years. The synthesis project induced and involved a major change of paradigm in the field of natural product synthesis.

In coordination chemistry and catalysis hemilability refers to a property of many polydentate ligands which contain at least two electronically different coordinating groups, such as hard and soft donors. These hybrid or heteroditopic ligands form complexes where one coordinating group is easily displaced from the metal centre while the other group remains firmly bound; a behaviour which has been found to increase the reactivity of catalysts when compared to the use of more traditional ligands.

In Lewis acid catalysis of organic reactions, a metal-based Lewis acid acts as an electron pair acceptor to increase the reactivity of a substrate. Common Lewis acid catalysts are based on main group metals such as aluminum, boron, silicon, and tin, as well as many early and late d-block metals. The metal atom forms an adduct with a lone-pair bearing electronegative atom in the substrate, such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and halogens. The complexation has partial charge-transfer character and makes the lone-pair donor effectively more electronegative, activating the substrate toward nucleophilic attack, heterolytic bond cleavage, or cycloaddition with 1,3-dienes and 1,3-dipoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phosphinooxazolines</span>

Phosphinooxazolines are a class of chiral ligands used in asymmetric catalysis. Their complexes are particularly effective at generating single enatiomers in reactions involving highly symmetric transition states, such as allylic substitutions, which are typically difficult to perform stereoselectively. The ligands are bidentate and have been shown to be hemilabile with the softer P‑donor being more firmly bound than the harder N‑donor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trisoxazolines</span>

Trisoxazolines are a class of tridentate, chiral ligands composed of three oxazoline rings. Despite being neutral they are able to form stable complexes with high oxidation state metals, such as rare earths, due to the chelate effect. The ligands have been investigated for molecular recognition and their complexes are used in asymmetric catalysts and polymerisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Feringa</span> Dutch Nobel laureate in chemistry

Bernard Lucas Feringa is a Dutch synthetic organic chemist, specializing in molecular nanotechnology and homogeneous catalysis. He is the Jacobus van 't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences, at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and an Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines".

Cobalt(II)–porphyrin catalysis is a process in which a Co(II) porphyrin complex acts as a catalyst, inducing and accelerating a chemical reaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helma Wennemers</span> German chemist

Helma B. Wennemers is a German organic chemist. She is a professor of organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Eric Meggers is a German chemist and professor of organic chemistry and chemical biology at the University of Marburg, Germany. His research currently focuses on the design of chiral catalysts for stereoselective synthesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin List</span> German chemist (born 1968)

Benjamin List is a German chemist who is one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and professor of organic chemistry at the University of Cologne. He co-developed organocatalysis, a method of accelerating chemical reactions and making them more efficient. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis".

René Peters is a German chemist and since 2008 Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart.

References

  1. Pfaltz, Andreas (1999). "From Corrin Chemistry to Asymmetric Catalysis - A Personal Account". Synlett. 1999 (S1): 835–842. doi:10.1055/s-1999-3122.
  2. Helmchen, Günter (5 May 2008). "Andreas Pfaltz: on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday". Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis. 350 (7–8): 951–952. doi: 10.1002/adsc.200800113 .
  3. Rasetti, Vittorio; Hilpert, Kurt; Fässler, Alexander; Pfaltz, Andreas; Eschenmoser, Albert (1 December 1981). "The Dihydrocorphinol→ Corrin Ring Contraction: A Potentially Biomimetic Mode of Formation of the Corrin Structure". Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English. 20 (12): 1058–1060. doi:10.1002/anie.198110581.
  4. Pfaltz, Andreas; Jaun, Bernhard; Fassler, Alexander; Eschenmoser, Albert; Jaenchen, Rolf; Gilles, Hans Harald; Diekert, Gabriele; Thauer, Rudolf K. (5 May 1982). "Zur Kenntnis des Faktors F430 aus methanogenen Bakterien: Struktur des porphinoiden Ligandsystems". Helvetica Chimica Acta. 65 (3): 828–865. doi:10.1002/hlca.19820650320.
  5. Fritschi, Hugo; Leutenegger, Urs; Pfaltz, Andreas (1 November 1986). "Chiral Copper-Semicorrin Complexes as Enantioselective Catalysts for the Cyclopropanation of Olefins by Diazo Compounds". Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English. 25 (11): 1005–1006. doi:10.1002/anie.198610051.
  6. Pfaltz, Andreas (1 June 1993). "Chiral semicorrins and related nitrogen heterocycles as ligands in asymmetric catalysis". Accounts of Chemical Research. 26 (6): 339–345. doi:10.1021/ar00030a007.
  7. Helmchen, Günter; Pfaltz, Andreas (2000). "PhosphinooxazolinesA New Class of Versatile, Modular P,N-Ligands for Asymmetric Catalysis". Accounts of Chemical Research. 33 (6): 336–345. doi:10.1021/ar9900865. PMID   10891051.
  8. von Matt, Peter; Pfaltz, Andreas (1 April 1993). "Chiral Phosphinoaryldihydrooxazoles as Ligands in Asymmetric Catalysis: Pd-Catalyzed Allylic Substitution". Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English. 32 (4): 566–568. doi:10.1002/anie.199305661.