Newswise — If you’re planning to attend “Frontiers in Catalysis,” the scholarly symposium set for May 26, honoring Richard F. Heck, the University of Delaware's Willis F. Harrington Professor Emeritus and winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, you need to register soon.
Registration numbers are rising rapidly for the day-long symposium, which will feature internationally prominent speakers, including Ei-ichi Negishi, one of Heck’s co-laureates, who will deliver the keynote address as the 2011 Heck Lecturer. View the agenda and register online at this website: http://www.udel.edu/nobelsymposium/
Heck, with fellow researchers Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University and Akira Suzuki of Japan’s Hokkaido University, received science’s most prestigious prize, “for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis,” from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10, 2010.
The scientists were honored for discovering “more efficient ways of linking carbon atoms together to build the complex molecules that are improving our everyday lives,” according to the Nobel statement.
Heck was on the faculty of the UD Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1971 until his retirement in 1989. While at UD, he invented the “Heck Reaction,” which uses the metal palladium as a catalyst to get carbon atoms to connect up — a difficult feat in nature.
His discovery changed the world, enabling the production of new classes of pharmaceuticals, revolutionizing DNA sequencing, and making possible the development of new kinds of polymers used in super-thin computer monitors, among other products.
Primary sponsors of the symposium include the University of Delaware through the Office of the Provost, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Dow Chemical Company; and Ashland Inc.
The American Chemical Society, DuPont, the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology at UD, and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute are providing additional support.
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