Synlett 2017; 28(11): 1270-1271
DOI: 10.1055/s-0036-1590548
cluster
© Georg Thieme Verlag Stuttgart · New York

Cluster Preface: Asymmetric Brønsted Base Catalysis

Choon-Hong Tan*
a   Division of Chemistry & Biological Chemistry, School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, , Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637371, Singapore   Email: choonhong@ntu.edu.sg
,
Benjamin List*
b   Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Kaiser-Wilhelm Platz 1, 45470, Mülheim an der Ruhr   Germany   Email: list@mpi-muelheim.mpg.de
› Author Affiliations
Further Information

Publication History

Received: 08 May 2017

Accepted: 08 May 2017

Publication Date:
20 June 2017 (online)

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Choon-Hong Tan is a professor at the Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his BSc (Hons) First Class from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and his Phd from the University of Cambridge. He underwent postdoctoral training at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University and the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School. He began his independent career at the Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore in 2003. Choon Hong has focused on the development of organocatalytic Brønsted base reactions that can be catalyzed with chiral guanidines. He has also demonstrated that pentanidiums (conjugated guanidiniums) are efficient phase-transfer catalysts. Recently, he described the use of chiral organic cations such as bisguanidiniums to modulate and activate anionic metallic salts.

Benjamin List has been a director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung since 2005. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1997 (Frankfurt). From 1997 until 1998 he conducted postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (USA) and became an assistant professor there in January 1999. In 2003 he joined the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung. He has been an honorary professor at the University of Cologne since 2004. Ben List’s research focuses on organic synthesis and catalysis. He has contributed fundamental concepts to chemical synthesis including aminocatalysis, enamine catalysis, and asymmetric-counteranion-directed catalysis (ACDC). His latest work deals with chiral counteranions in asymmetric catalysis. This remarkably general strategy for asymmetric synthesis has recently found widespread use in organocatalysis, transition-metal catalysis, and Lewis acid catalysis.