Nobel Laureate Richard R. Schrock
will deliver the inaugural Power of Applied Chemistry seminar on
Tuesday, April 25. This in-person event, which is open to all members of
the University of Delaware community, will take place at 3 p.m. in the
Audion at STAR Tower followed by a reception at 4 p.m. Registration is
requested at the College of Engineering events page.
Schrock is the F.G. Keyes Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Distinguished Professor and George K. Helmkamp Founder’s Chair of Chemistry at University of California, Riverside. He shares the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry
with Robert H. Grubbs and Yves Chauvin for contributions to an organic
synthesis technique known as olefin metathesis. This is one of organic
chemistry’s most important reactions, where carbon atom double bonds are
broken and remade in ways that cause atom groups to change places, and
has enabled researchers to create important molecules such as new
pharmaceuticals.
Schrock has published more than 625 research papers and supervised
over 200 doctoral students and postdocs. He is also a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences,
and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society.
In advance of the event, Schrock shared what has motivated him
throughout his decorated academic career, what he’ll be presenting
during his seminar and what the concept of the “power of applied
chemistry” means to him.
Q: What types of research problems motivate you?
Schrock: While my research is very focused on fundamental
chemistry, we also want to make compounds that improve our understanding
of catalytic reactions and that can be used in industry. Overall, I
think it’s important to work on problems that have the potential to
change the field.
Q: How did your time working at DuPont’s Experimental Station influence your career trajectory?
Schrock: At the Experimental Station, we had all the
instrumentation, chemicals, funding, and equipment we needed to make new
discoveries.
It was while I was working at DuPont in 1974 that I made a discovery
that drew me to this problem with olefin metathesis. I was interested in
alkyl groups and early transition metals like tantalum, and as I was
starting to think about interesting chemical compounds I could make, one
of our consultants gave a lecture on a compound that had six methyl
groups around a tungsten atom.
I thought that work was really cool, and because tungsten is ‘next
door’ to tantalum on the periodic table, I thought I could make a
compound of a tantalum atom that had five methyl groups around it. That
compound was unstable, and so I moved on to using larger alkyl groups.
In that process, I observed this reaction called alpha abstraction where
you make a metal-carbon double bond. I can still remember that day: It
was such a revolutionary thing that I really didn’t expect. But that’s
the nature of discoveries — you don't really expect them.
Q: What have you been working on since your Nobel prize-winning discovery?
Schrock: In 2005 I received the Nobel Prize for contributions
to organic chemistry. But back then, there was still a lot of
organometallic chemistry to be done, and we knew very little compared to
what we know now.
When I came to UC Riverside in 2018, there were still a number of
unsolved problems in the field of organometallic chemistry. One of those
was how alkylidene complexes, which are catalysts for olefin
metathesis, are formed from olefins. Then, two years ago, we made a
discovery about the general method for making these alkylidenes. It goes
back to work I did at MIT in 1978 with tantalum that, again, turned out
to be alpha abstraction. This is what I’ll be presenting at my upcoming
seminar at UD, “Mo and W-Based Olefin Metathesis Catalysts are formed
from Metallacyclopentanes.”
It's a finding that we never expected and that has us all really
excited. It’s also very satisfying because I discovered the reaction and
it's very pleasing to be able to say that I just rediscovered it with
tungsten.
Q: What comes to mind when you think of the seminar series title “The power of applied chemistry”?
Schrock: When I look around, everything is chemistry — from
the plants outside my window to the complex chemical reactions done by
the human body. And because of that, chemistry is powerful.
But with chemistry, you have to know the basics, and you have to
understand it thoroughly to be able to use it. But when you do
understand it, you’ll be able to apply chemistry to solve problems that
you didn’t even know existed before. And that's the power of applied
chemistry.
The Power of Applied Chemistry Seminar Series, presented by
Chemours and the University of Delaware, promotes the advancement of
chemistry, materials and engineering education and research through
academic and industry partnership.
