University of Michigan's Sanford to receive Heck Award, deliver lecture

3:34 p.m., Nov. 3, 2015--The University of Michigan’s Melanie Sanford will receive the 2015 Richard F. Heck Award and deliver the 12th annual Heck Lecture at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 11, in 101 Brown Laboratory on the University of Delaware campus in Newark.

The Richard F. Heck Award and Lecture honors the late Prof. Heck, Willis F. Harrington Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Delaware and a 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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June 5: Blue Hen 5K

University of Delaware graduates planning to attend Alumni Weekend are encouraged to register for the annual Blue Hen 5K walk and run, which will be held Sunday morning, June 5.

June 6-9: Food and culture series

The 20th annual June Lecture Series at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UD in Wilmington will be held June 6-9. Titled 'June a la Carte,' this year's program focuses on great political documents, feminism, world politics and a Newark cuisine sampler.

• June 6-9: Food and culture series
• Through June 30: 'Saving White Clay Creek'
• July 22: WWE Heatwave Tour
• Through Sept. 16: Women of color in academia

Sanford is the Moses Gomberg Collegiate Professor of Chemistry and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. 

Her research focuses on the development of metal-catalyzed carbon–hydrogen functionalization reactions, which have exciting implications for revolutionizing the way that chemists construct a wide host of important molecules. 

The high impact of her work has been recognized with many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship -- the so-called “genius grant” -- and the Sackler Prize in Chemistry. 

By impacting both how chemists make molecules and how chemists think about the fundamental reactivity of transition metals with organic molecules, Sanford embodies the spirit of the Heck lectureship, a representative of UD’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry said. 

The Richard F. Heck Award and Lectureship was established 2004 by the department in honor of Heck’s seminal contributions in palladium-catalyzed cross couplings and other transition metal-catalyzed transformations.

Heck himself returned to deliver the inaugural lecture in 2004 to a standing-room only crowd in 101 Brown Laboratory. Heck said several times that evening that he was surprised that so many people were interested in “this old chemistry,” asking, “Couldn’t they just read my papers?” 

He was humbly astonished that chemists from all over the region had come to see the man whose science had changed the world. 

In 2010, the Nobel Prize committee encouraged the rest of the world to celebrate his accomplishments by awarding Heck and fellow researchers Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.” 

Each year the Heck Lecture continues to be an outstanding event that has brought leading researchers in transition metal-catalyzed transformations to UD, including three who have now become Nobel Laureates, six who are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and five who are members of the National Academy of the Sciences. 

The Heck lecturers not only bring cutting-edge research from the world’s leading laboratories, but also have provided an opportunity to reflect on the incredible groundbreaking discoveries that occurred in Delaware. 

The 2015 Heck Lecture will be the first since Prof. Heck’s death in October, and will be a special occasion to remember and honor the legacy Heck left to the University of Delaware and to the larger scientific community. 

Ongoing efforts are focused on endowing this important lectureship. For more information, see this website. 

Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson