UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 11.30 a.m.
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR DECLAN GILHEANY on 16 June 2015, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa on JOHN BROWN
President, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
John Brown is one of the most respected chemists of his generation and is world-renowned for his research on catalysis by transition-metal complexes with an emphasis on understanding their mechanisms and contributions to organic synthesis, especially asymmetric synthesis. We honour him today with a Doctorate in Science from University College Dublin.
John was born in Manchester and attended the University of Manchester for his undergraduate degree and his PhD with Professor Arthur Birch on metal-ammonia reductions between 1960 and 1963. This was followed by postdoctoral work with Professor Ron Breslow at Columbia University and an independent Rothman's Fellowship at the Australian National University in Canberra. After a brief stay at Bristol University in 1965, his first academic post was at the then new University of Warwick in 1966. He remained there for eight years, during which time the excellent (and widely used) textbook “Organic Reaction Mechanisms” by Alder, Baker and Brown was published in 1971 and subsequently translated into Polish, Italian and Japanese.
John moved to Oxford in 1974 to a Lectureship associated with Wadham College until retirement in 2008. He held a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship between 2008-2010, and is based in the new Chemistry Research Laboratory, the construction of which he supervised, University of Oxford as Emeritus Professor, and is also an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College.
His main research interests have been in the catalysis of organic reactions, especially for enantioselective synthesis. This is a key approach to preparing molecules of interest to medicinal chemistry and materials science programmes, in industry and academia. He played a key part in the early emerging area of rhodium-catalysed asymmetric hydrogenation, a transformation that is now used daily in the pharmaceutical industry, by helping to unravel its mechanism (sometimes called the Halpern-Brown mechanism) by the characterisation of its reactive intermediates This research now features in many under- and postgraduate courses and texts worldwide and it is noteworthy that final year UCD students would have seen his work feature in this year’s exam!
His work on asymmetric hydrogenation led naturally to work on asymmetric hydroboration, and the P,N ligand Quinap, designed and synthesised by Brown, proved very effective for this reaction. More recent ventures in catalysis include various studies of palladium-catalysed coupling of alkenes (the Heck reaction) including asymmetric couplings, C-H activation studies in arenes and heteroarenes, and the observation of Pd-catalysed methylation via an internally activated TMS group. Also recently, he has solved the mechanism of Soai's amplifying asymmetric autocatalysis, including the structure of the reactive intermediates. His career has been characterised by providing elegant solutions to some of the most complicated and important mechanistic problems, employing NMR spectroscopy as the key analytical tool, allied to an intuitive feel for chemistry that few others possess.
This work was performed by a talented group of over 100 undergraduate students, over 70 PhD students and 50 postdoctoral fellows and a series of visiting scientists. Over 300 publications have resulted from the work, and he has given plenary or invited lectures at over 100 national and international conferences.
John was widely recognised as being an enthusiastic and inspiring supervisor, providing a never-ending supply of good research ideas, promoting an excellent research group atmosphere and team ethic and supporting their career choices. Many of his former group members themselves have gone on to achieve distinction in academia and industry and many of these cite their time in John’s group as being particularly formative in their careers.
John has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours as recognition for his groundbreaking work in asymmetric catalysis. These include the award of the Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden Lecture in 1991, the Royal Society of Chemistry Prize in Organometallic Chemistry in 1993, a share of the Descartes Award 2001, and the Horst Pracejus Prize of the German Chemical Society in 2005. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1996. He was the Robert Robinson Award Winner in 2013, one of the most prestigious awards from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The citation for this award was as follows:
“For his key contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of organometallic catalysis, and the resulting practical applications through the introduction of new catalysts for synthesis.”
He has held short-term Visiting Professorships in many other universities including Zaragoza, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Brno, Sassari, Moscow, Groningen, Kyoto and Tarragona.
John has served UCD as an External Examiner for the School of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (2002-4), was a member of the Board of the Conway Institute (2004-7), a member of the Advisory Board of Celtic Catalysts, my spin-out company from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (2003-2008). He has delivered a series of lectures in UCD, was the Inaugural Lecturer of the UCD Chemical Society in 1995 and was a speaker at the annual UCD Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology Symposium in 2008. He has been a good friend to UCD and his experience and advice have been very helpful at critical junctures for the School and the UCD Conway Institute.
Although John no longer has a research group, he still collaborates with many researchers in Oxford and worldwide, in addition to providing excellent advice and ideas to his junior colleagues at Oxford.
Outside of Chemistry, John is an avid supporter of Manchester United and English cricket, both of which have seen better days! He loves walking in the Cotswolds with his wife Una, who has been with him since his undergraduate days and who has also been a source of support to many generations of his research group. We are delighted that Una, their daughter Cathie, their son David and granddaughter Christine are with us today.
It is indeed therefore a very happy occasion for University College Dublin to recognise the significant research contributions of John Brown by conferring upon him the Degree of Doctor of Science.
_____________________________________________________________________
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus Scientiae; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.