On December 6th of 2019, Prof. Benjamin List from Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, visited the SKLEOC at Nankai University. In addition to academic communications with faculties and students, he gave a talk entitled “Very Strong and Confined Chiral Acids Universal Catalysts for Asymmetric Synthesis?” at the Lecture Hall of Shixian Building at 4:00 PM.
Prior to the talk, Prof. Qilin Zhou awarded Prof. Bode the “Nankai University Lectureship on Organic Chemistry” certificate on behalf of the SKLEOC. During the talk, Prof. List mainly introduced their achievements of developing chiral acids catalyst for asymmetric synthesis. He successfully developed a new pattern of asymmetric synthesis: Chiral Counteranion Directed Catalysis. The talk was so inspirational that there were no empty seats in the hall. After the talk the audience had in depth discussions concerning details of his awesome research.
Prof. List obtained his Ph.D. from Goethe University Frankfurt, after which he pursued the postdoc research at the Scripps institute and then was promoted as assistant professor. He joined Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in 2003 and was made a professor in 2005. Prof. List mainly engaged in organic catalysis and synthesis and he is also one of the pioneers in the field of asymmetric organic catalysis. He opened up a new pattern of asymmetric catalysis and has published more than 200 papers, which earned him numerous awards, such as Otto-Bayer- Prize(2012)，Horst-Pracejus-Prize (2013), Mukaiyama Award (2013), Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2014), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz- Prize(2016) and so on. Prof. List now act as the chief editor of Synlett and he is also editorial board member of Nature Communications and Synfacts.
