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Synthesis

F. Albert Cotton Award In Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry

by Stephen K. Ritter
February 11, 2013 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 91, Issue 6

Robinson
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Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Robinson/U of Georgia
Gregory H. Robinson, the Franklin Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia.
Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Robinson/U of Georgia

Sponsored by the F. Albert Cotton Endowment Fund

Gregory H. Robinson, Franklin Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia, tends to stand out in a crowd. His physical presence is more suggestive of a football player than a mild-mannered chemistry professor. Yet he has proven himself quite capable at being both.

As a linebacker at Jacksonville State University, Robinson once used his size, speed, and agility to put fear in opposing teams’ quarterbacks. He earned United Press International All-American and Gulf South Conference Defensive Player of the Year honors during his senior year in 1979. When not on the gridiron, he was using his scientific acumen to perform intricate chemistry in the lab.

Today, Robinson, who is 54, is praised for his tenacious intellectual approach to synthetic inorganic chemistry. He is being recognized with the Cotton Award for taking advantage of the stabilizing effects of N-heterocyclic carbene ligands, typically associated with transition-metal catalysts, to trap highly reactive main-group-element fragments.

“Robinson is an unusually imaginative and strikingly creative synthetic inorganic chemist,” says Georgia colleague R. Bruce King. “A hallmark of all of Greg Robinson’s papers is the elegant simplicity of his synthetic approach,” adds Philip P. Power of the University of California, Davis.

The Robinson group’s milestones include the synthesis of the first stable neutral diborene, L:(H)B=B(H):L, where L is an N-heterocyclic carbene. Robinson built on that discovery to prepare the first carbene-stabilized disilene, L:Si=Si:L. This compound, effectively a soluble allotrope of elemental silicon that acts like a transition metal, has accumulated accolades from leading inorganic chemists the world over.

This “impressive finding opens up new, unprecedented possibilities in organometallic chemistry,” notes Akira Sekiguchi of the University of Tsukuba, in Japan. “What baffles me is that this complex is a truly stable, ‘bottleable’ species, not just a molecule which is observed in a low-temperature matrix,” comments Gernot Frenking of Philipps University, in Marburg, Germany. “It represents a landmark in low-coordinate silicon chemistry,” says Guy Bertrand of UC San Diego.

Robinson’s other notable chemical exploits include carbene-stabilized aromatic gallium ring and cluster compounds—an experimental realization of metalloaromaticity—and the synthesis of a provocative compound described as containing a gallium-gallium triple bond.

After earning a B.S. in chemistry in 1980 from Jacksonville State, Robinson received a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1984 from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, under the guidance of Jerry L. Atwood. During his final year at Alabama, he was selected Graduate Student of the Year. Robinson began his career at Clemson University, then joined the faculty at Georgia in 1995.

Robinson has served on the editorial boards of Organometallics (2004–07) and C&EN (2001–07) and currently serves on the editorial board of Inorganic Chemistry. He is a recipient of the Southern Chemist Award, presented by the ACS Memphis Section, and the 2004 Percy L. Julian Award, which is the highest honor bestowed by the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers. Robinson also is a recipient of the Charles H. Herty Medal from the ACS Georgia Section (2008); the Lamar Dodd Award, which is the highest research award presented by the University of Georgia (2010); and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (2012).

“His synthetic and structural work has provided a much-needed basis and stimulus for main-group-element chemical research in general, a basis that goes beyond his personal research goals and provides textbook examples for new science,” notes organometallic chemist Marcetta Y. Darensbourg of Texas A&M University. “And the reach of his chemistry continues to expand.”

Robinson will present the award address before the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry.

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