BIO
John Hartwig (Elmhurst, Illinois, United States, 1964) completed a degree in chemistry at Princeton University, then went on to earn a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990. That same year he began a postdoctoral fellowship for the American Cancer Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to Yale University in 1992, rising through the ranks to become Professor of Chemistry and finally Irénée DuPont Chair in Chemistry. In 2006, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois-Champaign, where he was Kenneth L. Rinehart Jr. Professor of Chemistry until 2011. He then returned to U.C. Berkeley, where he is currently Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry. The author of over 400 papers, he has also garnered more than 98,000 citations, holds more than 20 patents and in 2010 published the book Organotransition Metal Chemistry – From Bonding to Catalysis.
CONTRIBUTION
The metal-based catalysts developed by John Hartwig have changed the way drugs are manufactured for conditions ranging from leukemia to HIV or depression. He has excelled in the development of homogeneous catalysis, in which both the catalyst and the molecules undergoing the chemical reaction are in the liquid phase, dissolved in a solution. This enables reactions to occur at relatively low temperatures and at very precise sites within the molecule.
Among the reactions Hartwig has focused on most are those occurring at the site of carbon-hydrogen bond cleavage, where the Berkeley chemist has developed catalysts that can help break the bond so it accommodates the desired chemical reaction. These catalysts have already been put to work in the production of a key compound for anti-cancer pharmaceuticals and another two against HIV. Another of the awardee’s lauded contributions concerns the formation of the carbon-nitrogen bond, thanks to a catalyst which has led to drugs for depression, HIV and hepatitis C. Hartwig has since turned his attention to the polymers making up the plastics we use daily, trying to deconstruct their bonds and isolate their components so that they can serve to recycle plastic in new ways.
