David A. Evans was an American chemist who was the Abbott and James Lawrence professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He was a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and his research focused on synthetic chemistry and total synthesis, particularly of large biologically active molecules. Among his best-known works is the development of aldol reaction methodology.
Robert Howard GrubbsForMemRS was an American chemist and the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He was a co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on olefin metathesis.
John Dombrowski Roberts was an American chemist. He made contributions to the integration of physical chemistry, spectroscopy, and organic chemistry for the understanding of chemical reaction rates. Another characteristic of Roberts' work was the early use of NMR, focusing on the concept of spin coupling.
John E. Bercaw is an American chemist and Centennial Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology.
Peter B. Dervan is the Bren Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. The primary focus of his research is the development and study of small organic molecules that can sequence-specifically recognize DNA, a field in which he is an internationally recognized authority. The most important of these small molecules are pyrrole–imidazole polyamides. Dervan is credited with influencing "the course of research in organic chemistry through his studies at the interface of chemistry and biology" as a result of his work on "the chemical principles involved in sequence-specific recognition of double helical DNA". He is the recipient of many awards, including the National Medal of Science (2006).
Richard Frederick Heck was an American chemist noted for the discovery and development of the Heck reaction, which uses palladium to catalyze organic chemical reactions that couple aryl halides with alkenes. The analgesic naproxen is an example of a compound that is prepared industrially using the Heck reaction.
Jay Kazuo Kochi was an American physical organometallic chemist who held lectureship at Harvard University, and faculty positions at Case Institute of Technology, 1962-1969,, Indiana University, 1969 to 1984, and the University of Houston, 1984 to 2008.
David A. Tirrell is an American chemist and the Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor and professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). A pioneer in the areas of polymer synthesis and protein biosynthesis, his research has a wide range of applications, including coatings, adhesion, lubrication, bioengineering and biomedical intervention. From 2012 to 2018, Tirrell was the director of the Beckman Institute at Caltech. As of 2017, he serves as Caltech's Provost. He is one of very few American scientists to have been elected to all three branches of the United States National Academies: the National Academy of Sciences (2006), the National Academy of Engineering (2008), and the Institute of Medicine (2011). He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Brian M. Stoltz is currently a professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. The primary focus of his research is chemical synthesis with an emphasis on expanding the scope of allylic alkylation for the preparation of complex molecules possessing unique structural, biological, and physical properties. His research involves the total synthesis of natural products such as dragmacidin F and (–)-cyanthiwigin F, and development of synthetic reactions to access quaternary stereocenters. Specifically, he has focused on the allylic alkylation of enolates, developing an enantioselective variant in 2004.
Scott Eric Denmark is an American chemist who is the Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Denmark received an S.B. degree from MIT in 1975 and the D.Sc.Tech. degree from ETH Zurich in 1980, under the supervision of Professor Albert Eschenmoser. He joined the faculty at UIUC the same year and became an associate professor in 1986, full professor in 1987, and was named the Fuson Professor of Chemistry in 1991. He served as the president and editor-in-chief of the Organic Reactions book series between 2008 and 2018. In 2017, Denmark was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
John F. Hartwig is an American organometallic chemist who holds the position of Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. His laboratory traditionally focuses on developing transition metal-catalyzed reactions. Hartwig is known for helping develop the Buchwald–Hartwig amination, a chemical reaction used in organic chemistry for the synthesis of carbon–nitrogen bonds via the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling of amines with aryl halides.
Subramania Ranganathan (1934–2016), popularly known as Ranga, was an Indian bioorganic chemist and professor and head of the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He was known for his studies on synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry and was an elected fellow Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1977, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Sarah Elizabeth Reisman is the Bren Professor of Chemistry and the Chair of Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. She received the (2013) Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the (2014) Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Organic Synthesis. Her research focuses on the total synthesis of complex natural products and data-driven developments of asymmetric catalysis.
Vy Maria Dong is a Vietnamese-American Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Dong works on enantioselective catalysis and natural product synthesis. She received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Merck, Sharp & Dohme Award in 2020, the American Chemical Society's Elias James Corey Award in 2019, and the UCI's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2018.
Sukbok Chang is a South Korean organic chemist. He is a distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He is also the director of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations (CCHF). He was an associate editor on ACS Catalysis and has served on the editorial advisory boards of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Accounts of Chemical Research. His major research interest is transition metal catalyzed C-H bond functionalization for the carbon-carbon bond and carbon-heteroatom bond formation.
F. Dean Toste is the Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and faculty scientist at the chemical sciences division of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He is a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and is best known for his contributions to gold chemistry and asymmetric ion-pairing catalysis. Toste was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
Barbara Imperiali is a Professor of Biology and Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Affiliate Member of the Broad Institute. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Xile Hu is a Swiss chemist specialized in catalysis. He is a professor in chemistry at EPFL and leads the Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis at the School of Basic Sciences.
Jonas C. Peters is the Bren Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and Director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute. He has contributed to the development of catalysts and photocatalysts relevant to small molecule activation.
Jin-Quan Yu is a Chinese-born American chemist. He is the Frank and Bertha Hupp Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Research, where he also holds the Bristol Myers Squibb Endowed Chair in Chemistry. He is a 2016 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Yu is a leader in the development of C–H bond activation reactions in organic chemistry, and has reported many C–H activation reactions that could be applicable towards the synthesis of drug molecules and other biologically active compounds. He also co-founded Vividion Therapeutics in 2016 with fellow Scripps chemists Benjamin Cravatt and Phil Baran, and is a member of the scientific advisory board of Chemveda Life Sciences.
