Research

Andreas Pfaltz has made himself a name for his seminal contributions in the field of asymmetric catalysis. Most of his research was carried out at the University of Basel, where he is Ordinarius (Full Professor) of Organic Chemistry, and at the Max Planck Institute for Coal research, where he served as director and head of the Section of Homogeneous Catalysis.

The goal of his research in this area is to develop chiral catalysts, which control a chemical reaction is such a way that it leads preferentially to one of two enantiomers (mirror-imaged molecules) with high selectivity. The chiral catalysts developed in his group have found widespread use. Most noteworthy are iridium complexes with nitrogen-phosphorus ligands, which are the first catalysts that allow highly enantioselective hydrogenation of unfunctionalized olefins and, therefore, greatly enhance the scope of asymmetric hydrogenation. In a more recent line of research, he has devised a new mass spectrometric screening method that opens up new possibilities for the discovery and optimization of chiral catalysts.

Career

• since 1999 Professor of Chemistry at the University of Basel, Switzerland
• 1995-1998 Direktor at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim a. d. Ruhr, Germany
• 1993-1995 Professor of Chemistry at the University of Basel, Switzerland
• 1990-1993 Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Basel, Switzerland
• 1987 Habilitation at ETH Zürich, Switzerland
• 1978 Ph.D. at ETH Zürich, Switzerland
• 1967-1972 Undergraduate studies at ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Projects

• since 2005 oordinator of the joint graduate school “Catalysts and Catalytic Reactions for Organic Synthesis” of the Universities of Basel and Freiburg i. Br.

Functions

• 2006-2011 Member of the Board of Editors of Organic Synthesis
• 2003-2011 Member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation

Honours and Memberships

• 2011 Yamada-Koga Prize, Japan Research Foundation for Optically Active Compounds
• 2008 Ryoji Noyori Prize, The Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan
• 2003 Prelog Medal of the ETH Zürich, Switzerland
• 2003 Horst Pracejus Prize of the German Chemical Society