Research

Marian Mikołajczyk is distinguished for many important contributions to heteroatom chemistry. The majority of these were made from the Centre of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences where he works since 1972 and which he led as a director from 1991 to 2007. He made major contributions to static and dynamic stereochemistry of organic phosphorus and sulfur compounds, but is best known for his pioneer works on the mechanism and stereochemistry of nucleophilic substitution at chiral phosphorus and sulfur centres. He developed new asymmetric and stereoselective syntheses of phosphorus and sulfur compounds and used them as key reagents in the synthesis of biologically active compounds and natural products like aminophosphonic acids, cyclopentanoid antibiotics, prostanoids and carbocyclic nucleosides.