5th Annual MAX T. ROGERS DISTINGUISHED LECTURESHIP
 
The MSU Department of Chemistry is proud to present:
 
John E. Bercaw

 
The 1993 Distinguished Lecturer
in a series of lectures
sponsored by the
MSU Section of the ACS and the
Department of Chemistry
 
on
April 28-30, 1993
 

 
LECTURE TOPICS
 
Wednesday, April 28, 1993
"Ziegler-Natta Polymerization of Propylene: A Truly Remarkable Catalytic Process"
8:00 p.m., Room 138
Chemistry Building
Michigan State University
 
 
Thursday, April 29, 1993
"Concerning the Mechanism of Olefin Insertion into Transition Metal- Hydrogen and Metal-Carbon Bonds"
4:00 p.m., Room 138
Chemistry Building
Michigan State University
 
 
Friday, April 30, 1993
"Organometallic Approaches to Hydrocarbon Oxidations"
11:00 a.m., Room 138
Chemistry Building
Michigan State University
 

---

 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

John Bercaw was born in 1944 in Cincinnati, Ohio. After completing his undergraduate education at North Carolina State University in 1967, he joined Hans Brintzinger's group at the University of Michigan where he studied reactions of titanocene with small molecules such as hydrogen and dinitrogen. He received his Ph.D. in 1971 and, after a brief postdoctoral stay with Jack Halpern at the University of Chicago, he joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology as an Arthur Amos Noyes Research Fellow in Chemistry. Rising rapidly through the ranks, he received tenure in 1977 and was named the Shell Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in 1985.

Professor Bercaw has made several seminal contributions to synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry. He was the fIrst to utilize the now ubiquitous pentamethyl-cyclopentadienyl ligand (Cp*) to prepare stable, low-valent early transition metal complexes for studying the reduction chemistry of dinitrogen and carbon monoxide. The ability to isolate well-defined dinitrogen complexes set the stage for probing the details of nitrogen reduction to hydrazine in a series of elegantly designed experiments. In work which complemented nitrogen and carbon monoxide reduction chemistry, Professor Bercaw used the Group 4 decamethylmetallocene complexes to address the fundamental oxidative addition of water and ammonia to transition metal centers. From a practical viewpoint, several ingenious techniques for handling air sensitive compounds have originated in Bercaw's laboratories.

Recently, Professor Bercaw has been concentrating on two of the most fundamental challenges facing transition metal chemistry: the metal-mediated oxidation of hydrocarbons and catalytic carbon-hydrogen and carbon-carbon bond forming reactions. In the latter case, Bercaw has found that electron-deficient alkyl complexes of decamethylscandocene are exceptionally reactive with hydrocarbon C-H bonds, a discovery which lead to classic papers detailing the mechanisms of sigma-bond metathesis. Similar early transition metal systems have served as homogeneous models for olefin polymerization and have provided the first evidence for an a "agostic" assisted pathway in Ziegler-Natta polymerization of olefins.

Several awards signify the distinguished accomplishments of Professor Bercaw. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has also been honored with American Chemical Society Awards in Pure Chemistry (1980) and Organometallic Chemistry (1990). His other awards and honors include an A. P. Sloan Fellowship and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Long recognized as an exceptionally gifted lecturer, Professor Bercaw has received the Annual Award for Teaching from the Association of Students at the California Institute of Technology. He has also been honored as a visiting professor at the Universitat Konstanz and the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Bercaw has presented numerous honorary lectures at universities and scientific meetings and has authored 125 articles in inorganic chemistry.