Bernd Giese

Bernd Giese ( born June 2, 1940 in Hamburg ) is a German chemist who mainly deals with bio-organic radical and photochemical reactions.

Life

Giese studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Hamburg and Munich, where he received his doctorate from Rolf Huisgen 1969. He habilitated in 1976 at the University of Freiburg. From 1969 to 1971 he worked in pharmaceutical research at BASF in Ludwigshafen. In the following years he worked at the Westfälische Wilhelms- University in Münster (1971-1972) and the University of Freiburg (1972-1977) until the first appointment as a full professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt ( 1977-1988 ). Since 1989, Giese Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the University of Basel. Since 2010, Giese is a visiting professor at the University of Fribourg.

In 1999, he was inducted into the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and 2003 as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Work

First Giese worked in the field of kinetics and selectivity of complex organic reactions and led radical (CC ) linkages as a synthetic method. The addition of C- radical it has found to olefins is also known as Giese reaction. His current research focuses on radical reactions in biological systems, in particular the electron transfer through DNA and peptides and the free radical cleavage of DNA, peptides and lipids. Especially considered here is the investigation of the so-called hopping mechanism of electron transfer processes of DNA that show a dependence on the nucleotide sequence. Other areas of research are the stereoselective synthesis of cyclic amino acids and peptides with radicals and biradicals by photoinduced H- abstraction, as well as the application of new protective groups in organic synthesis and combinatorial chemistry, which can be removed by photochemical reactions.

Science Awards

Among Giese scientific awards the Karl- Winnacker Fellowship ( 1977), the Carl Duisberg Memorial Award (1977 ), the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (1987 ), the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (2005), the Emil Fischer Medal (2006), and the Paracelsus Prize of the Swiss Chemical society ( 2012).

Writings (selection )

• Radicals in Organic Synthesis: Formation of Carbon - Carbon Bonds. Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1986.
• Ed. with Manfred Regitz: C- radicals ( = Houben -Weyl: Methods of Organic Chemistry Volume E 19a. ). 2 vols. Thieme, Stuttgart 1989.
• Dennis P. Curran, Ned A. Porter: Stereochemistry of Radical Reactions: Concepts, Guidelines, and Synthetic Applications. VCH, Weinheim 1996.