ACS Award For Creative Work In Synthetic Organic Chemistry

Many chemists peruse the Merck Index but not many can boast that it contains a reaction with their name on it. Ei-ishi Negishi, the Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, however, landed in the index in 2001 for the Negishi coupling reaction, a successful synthetic strategy that employs a palladium or nickel catalyst to form coveted carbon-carbon bonds between an organometal containing zinc, aluminum, or zirconium, and an organic halide. These reactions have been a valuable tool for organic chemists attempting to synthesize natural products and other materials.

From 1976 to 1980, Negishi published a series of 10 seminal papers describing the coupling reactions. “Negishi almost singlehandedly laid the early foundation for the Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling” with these papers, notes Arun K. Ghosh, a chemistry and medicinal chemistry professor at Purdue. Since then, the 100 papers Negishi has written on the couplings have been cited more than 7,500 times.

During his nearly 40-year career, Negishi has continued to focus on organic synthesis via organometallics. In fact, other accomplishments in this area also bear his name, including Negishi reagents, di­al­kyl­zirconocenes used in organozirconium-based reactions; and the Negishi carboalumination, Zr-catalyzed carboalumination of alkynes.

In the past decade, Negishi has continued to break new ground in his field, with discoveries such as the enyne routes to conjugated diynes and oligoynes, and the development of protocols for the synthesis of regio- and stereoselective 1,5-dienes—which include terpenoid natural products and various forms of coenzyme Q.

Negishi, 74, received his bachelor’s degree in organic chemistry from the University of Tokyo in 1958 and then worked for two years as a research chemist at Teijin in Japan. He then came to the U.S. and received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, focusing on polymers, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963.

After postdoctoral positions with Herbert C. Brown at Purdue University studying organoborane chemistry, he spent seven years at Syracuse University as an assistant and then associate professor of organic and organometallic chemistry. He returned to Purdue in 1979, as a full professor and was appointed the inaugural Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor in 1999.

Negishi has published more than 400 papers and essays. He has written two books, including the “Handbook of Organopalladium Chemistry for Organic Synthesis,” which was published in 2002.

He has numerous awards and honors to his name, including a Fulbright Scholarship (1960–63), a J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987, the Chemical Society of Japan Award in 1996, and the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry in 1998. He was also awarded the Sir Edward Frankland Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2000, the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award in Germany in 1998, and the Yamada-Koge Prize in Japan in 2007.

Negishi will present the award address before the Division of Organic Chemistry.