Public Events Calendar

This year's Camille and Henry Dreyfus Lectures will be held at the Department of Chemistry on April 8 and 9, 2024. The Dreyfus Lecturer 2024 for both lectures will be Prof. Dr. Eric N. Jacobsen, Harvard University.

Privileged chiral scaffolds—structures that have been demonstrated to induce high levels of enantioselectivity across a variety of mechanistically distinct reactions—have proven profoundly enabling to the discovery of new asymmetric catalytic reactions.

This lecture will outline the development of a specific, new class of privileged chiral catalysts: dual H-bond donors (HBDs) bearing aryl-pyrrolidino-tert-leucine motifs. These HBD catalysts have proven broadly useful in a variety of C–C and C–heteroatom bond-forming processes, with enantioselectivity dictated primarily through selective stabilizing non-covalent interactions. Detailed case studies on the mechanism of enantioinduction with aryl-pyrrolidino-tertleucine HBDs will be presented, highlighting the cooperative features of these simple organic molecules that are likely responsible for the privileged nature of this scaffold.

Camille & Henry Dreyfus Lectureship

In memory of the Dreyfus brothers, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Inc. has established an annual Lectureship at the University of Basel. The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Lectureship brings a leading chemist from the United States to the Basel campus to deliver a series of talks and to meet with faculty and students in order to enhance the relationship between Swiss and U.S. science.