Chemistry Professor Robert Bergman is turning sixty this year and, to celebrate, a symposium is being held in his honor: “Organometallic Chemistry: From Mechanisms to Applications in Synthesis and Catalysis.” The symposium, which will take place on Saturday, June 1st, 2002, will consist of a series of short talks by former group members, followed by a party Saturday evening at a restaurant overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

Bergman has made many contributions to the synthesis and chemistry of several types of organic and organometallic compounds and to improving our understanding of the mechanisms of their reactions. He is probably best known for his discovery of the cyclization of ene-diynes to 1,4-phenylene diradicals, a reaction recently shown to be important in the biological action of certain antitumor agents, and for his finding of the first soluble organometallic complexes that undergo intermolecular insertion of transition metals into the carbon-hydrogen bonds of alkanes.

For more information about the symposium, click here or contact one of the organizers: Klaus H. Theopold (theopold@udel.edu) at the University of Delaware and Jeff Johnson at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (jeff_johnson@unc.edu).

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