ChemCafé

After yesterday’s Nobel Prize in Physics which went to two relatively young researchers (Andre Geim* and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester) for a very recent discovery (graphene, isolated in 2004), today’s Prize in Chemistry went to much older people for discoveries made 40 years ago: Richard F. Heck (emeritus professor at the [...]

Last week we enjoyed in Lausanne the long expected visit and talk by Prof. Makoto Fujita, from the University of Tokyo. Since my undergrad supramolecular chemistry courses I had been fascinated and intrigued by the macrocycles and cages that regularly popped up from the Fujita lab, so the idea of watching him giving a talk [...]

Some time ago came to Lausanne Prof. Lanny S. Liebeskind from Emory University in Atlanta, co-inventor of the Liebeskind-Srogl coupling. This coupling allows the formation of a new C-C bond starting from a thioester and a boronic acid. The reaction usually requires catalytical palladium as well as a copper-based co-catalyst, but a variation using only [...]