Maurice Brookhart

Maurice S. Brookhart ( born November 28, 1942 in Cumberland ( Maryland)) is an American chemist who deals with organic chemistry, and particularly metal organic chemistry.

Brookhart received in 1964 his bachelor's degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1968 and his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles, in organic chemistry with Saul Winstein ( Direct observation of carbonium ions by NMR in strong acid media). As a post-doctoral researcher and NATO Fellow, he was at the University of Southampton. In 1969 he became associate professor in 1976 and professor at the University of North Carolina. From 1990 he was William R. Kenan Jr. Professor there.

He has been a visiting professor at Oxford (1982 /83), at the University of Wisconsin, in Rennes, Toulouse, Berkeley, Marburg, Seville and at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim ( 2003).

It deals with transition metal complexes in organic synthesis and catalysis. In particular, with novel catalysts (Late transitional metal complexes ) for olefin polymerization, with which polymers can be built with unusual structure. He also deals with CH and CC bond activation by transition metal complexes for the development of catalysts.

With Malcolm LH Green in 1983 he coined the term agostic interaction.

He became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2001 the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. He holds an honorary doctorate in Rennes. In 2001, he was a Humboldt Research Award in Marburg. In 2003 he received the ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry, 2010, the Willard Gibbs Medal was 1994 Arthur C. Cope Scholar, was in 1995 a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and received the 1992 American Chemical Society Award in Organometallic Chemistry. In 2000 he was Centenary Lecturer of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

He was one of the editors of Organometallics.

Brookhart has been married since 1965 and has two children.