ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
The Heck Lectureship was created in 2004 to recognize visionary leadership in the field of organometallic chemistry, and to honor the contributions of Richard F. Heck. Heck is best known for developing the palladium-mediated coupling of an aryl halide or vinylic halide with an alkene, the reaction that bears his name. His early mechanistic studies led to the current understanding of the Pd(0)/Pd(II) cycle of oxidative addition and reductive elimination, by which carbon-X bonds are catalytically converted to carbon-carbon and carbon-hetero bonds. His investigations laid the groundwork for many of the catalytic organometallic bond forming processes currently in use in modern organic synthesis.
Richard Heck retired in 1989 from the University of Delaware, where he is the Willis F. Harrington Professor Emeritus. The Heck Lecture has been made possible through the generous support of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Lecturers
2004, Richard F. Heck, University of Delaware
2005, Stephen L. Buchwald, MIT
2006, Robert H. Grubbs, Caltech
2007, Robert G. Bergman, UC Berkeley
2008, Larry Overman, UC Irvine
2009, Barry Trost, Stanford
2010, John Hartwig, Illinois
2011, Ei-ichi Negishi, Purdue
2012, Eric N. Jacobsen, Harvard
2013, Greg Fu, Caltech
2014, Donald Darensbourg, Texas A&M
2015, Melanie Sanford, Michigan
2016, Scott Denmark, UIUC
2017, Michael Krische, UT Austin
2018, Karen Goldberg, U Penn
2019, Tamejiro Hiyama, Kyoto University, Chuo University
2023, Matthew Sigman, University of Utah
History
Richard F. Heck Lectureship
honors UD Emeritus faculty member and Nobel Laureate Richard Heck
established 2004