STEPHEN L. BUCHWALD

Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, MIT

Stephen L. Buchwald has been selected to receive the 2010 Gustavus J. Esselen Award for Chemistry
in the Public Interest from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society (NESACS).

The Esselen Award is presented annually to recognize and reward a U.S. or Canadian chemist whose scientific and technical work has contributed to the public well-being and has thereby communicated positive values of the chemical profession. Professor Buchwald’s selection recognizes his major impact on medicinal chemistry, due to his development of palladium and copper catalyzed processes to form carbon-nitrogen and carbonoxygen bonds. These catalysts are used daily by the discovery groups of nearly every major pharmaceutical company worldwide. His catalysts have enabled the synthesis of novel, promising,
small molecule drugs targeting a very wide range of diseases. His catalysts have also been instrumental in developing novel organic semi-conductors and in a wide range of other nonmedicinal chemical syntheses.

Professor Buchwald joined the MIT Department of Chemistry in 1984 as an assistant professor after post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology. He earned a B.S. in chemistry at Brown University in 1977, and an A.M. (1980) and a Ph.D. (1982) in chemistry from Harvard University. He has previously received the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry in 2000 and the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 2006.

Professor Buchwald received the Esselen Award medal and a $5000 prize at the Esselen award dinner and
lecture at Harvard University on Thursday, April 8, 2010.