Speakers

Department of Chemistry
University of Illinois
Urbana, USA

Scott E. Denmark was born in New York on 17 June 1953. He obtained an S. B. degree from M.I.T. in 1975 and a D. Sc. Tech degree in 1980 at the ETH-Zürich under the direction of Professor Albert Eschenmoser. That same year he began his career as assistant professor at the University of Illinois. He was promoted to associate professor in 1986, full professor in 1987 and then in 1991 named the Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry. Professor Denmark is primarily interested in the invention of new synthetic reactions and elucidating the origins of stereocontrol in novel, asymmetric reactions. He has pioneered the concept of chiral Lewis base activation of Lewis acids for catalysis in main group synthetic organic chemistry. His group has also developed palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings with organofunctional silicon and boron compounds while revealing the structure of the elusive pretransmetalation intermediates. In recent years, his group has investigated the use of chemoinformatics and machine learning to identify and optimize catalysts and reaction conditions for a variety of organic and organometallic reactions. Denmark has won a number of honors including: the Pedler and Robert Robinson Medals (RSC), the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, the Yamada-Koga Prize, the Prelog Medal (ETH-Zürich), the Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods (ACS), the Senior Award in Heterocyclic Chemistry (ISHC), the Kipping Award for Research in Silicon Chemistry (ACS), the Ryoji Noyori Prize (Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry of Japan), the Paracelsus Prize (Swiss Chemical Society) and the Arthur C. Cope Award (ACS). In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2018 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He edited Volume 85 of Organic Syntheses and currently serves on the Board of Directors, was Editor of Volumes 22-25 of Topics in Stereochemistry and was a founding Associate Editor of Organic Letters (1999-2004). After serving on the editorial board from 1994-2003, was Editor in Chief and President of Organic Reactions, Inc. (2008-2018) and remains on the Board of Directors. He currently serves on the advisory boards of Org. Lett., J. Org. Chem., and J. Am. Chem. Soc.