Anthony J. Arduengo
Anthony J. Arduengo, III | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1952 |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Unusual Valency, Carbene Chemistry |
| Awards | Alexander von Humboldt Prize; Fellow - American Association for the Advancement of Science; ICMGC Gold Medal for Excellence in Main-Group Element Chemistry |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Inorganic chemistry, Organic chemistry, Unusual Valency |
| Institutions | University of Alabama; Technische Universität - Braunschweig; DuPont Central Research; University of Illinois |
| Doctoral advisor | E.M. Burgess |
Anthony Joseph Arduengo, III is the Saxon Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alabama and an adjunct professor at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry of the Technical University of Braunschweig, (Germany). He is notable for his work on chemical compounds with unusual valency, especially in the field of stable carbene research.
Early Life
Anthony "Bo" Arduengo was born in 1952 in Tampa, Florida.[1] He grew up in the Atlanta, Georgia area. His father was a pressman and mechanic with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and instilled his son with an interest and skill with all things mechanical and scientific. By the age of 16 Anthony Arduengo and his father had built his first car from miscellaneous parts.[2] The car was registered as street legal and road-worthy. With some re-engineering the car was latter fitted to run on alternate fuels including alcohol and hydrogen (which would foretell Arduengo's professional research involvement with President Bush's 2003 National Hydrogen Fuel Initiative[3] and United States Department of Energy's Chemical Hydrogen Storage Program by more than 30 years).
Education
He attended Bouldercrest and Meadowview Elementary Schools and Walker High School.[4] In 1969 he left high school with enrollment in Georgia Tech's Joint Enrollment Program for High School Students (JEPHS).[5] He obtained his BSc (1974, cum laude) and his PhD (1976) at Georgia Tech, advised by Edward M. Burgess.[6] That made him an academic descendant of Justus von Liebig.[4]
Career
He was a research scientist at DuPont from 1976 to 1977 and from 1984 to 1998, and assistant professor at the University of Illinois from 1977 to 1984.[4] He is currently the Saxon Chair of Chemistry at the University of Alabama and holds a position as adjunct professor at the Technische Universität in Braunschweig, Germany.[4]
Research
Arduengo's research interests focus largely on the chemistry of new or unusual bonding arrangements. Among some of his achievements is the synthesis of the first compound with a planar T-shaped, 10-electron 3-coordinate bonding arrangement at a phosphorus atom. He is also a leading authority in carbenes, having directed the synthesis of the first stable, isolated, crystalline carbene (a derivative of imidazol-2-ylidene)[7] and several important examples of this class of compounds, including an air-stable carbene, a saturated-ring imidazolin-2-ylidene, a thiazol-2-ylidene (conjectured to exist in 1957 as an intermediate in the vitamin B1 catalytic cycle, but not isolated for 40 years), carbonyl ylides, chloronium ylides, and stable nitrile ylides.[8]
References
- ^ Anthony J. Arduengo, III (1999) Looking for Stable Carbenes: The Difficulty in Starting Anew. Accounts of Chemical Research, volume 32, number 11, pages 913–921. doi:10.1021/ar980126p
- ^ Talon (Walker High School paper), Vol. V, No. 1. September, 1968.
- ^ http://scienceblog.com/887/white-house-explains-bushs-hydrogen-car-plan/
- ^ a b c d Anthony J. Arduengo, III - personal home page. Retrieved 2010-10-03.
- ^ [1]
- ^ Anthony Joseph Arduengo (1976), The synthesis, structure and chemistry of substituent-perturbed thione S̲-methylides and S̲,S̲-dihalothiones Ph.D. Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology. Online catalog entry. Retrieved 2009-12-04.
- ^ A. J. Arduengo, R. L. Harlow and M. Kline (1991). "A stable crystalline carbene". J. Am. Chem. Soc. 113 (1): 361–363. doi:10.1021/ja00001a054.
- ^ Anthony J. Arduengo, III - Faculty page at the University of Alabama. Retrieved 2009-12-04.