Highlights of 45 years of research: A personal account

Abstract

This part of my biosketch, which I prepared on invitation by the Editors, made me realize again how entangled my interest for doing research and teaching and management have been over the years. Working together with my students and colleagues has always been a strong motivation and pleasure for me and I hope that this sketch of our research reflects our common enthusiasm for what we achieved. In hindsight, trying to overlook almost 45 years of research, various main themes can be discerned that marked my fundamental research in the subsequent periods at TNO Utrecht (1968–1977), University of Amsterdam (1977–1986) and University of Utrecht (1986–2007). Overarching has been my preference and fascination for working with nitrogen based ligands (culminating in the design and use of the NCN-pincer ligand platform, vide infra), the study of synthetic routes for organometallics (most importantly trans- and cyclo-metallation routes), the use of NMR for the study of the stereochemistry of organometallics (cf. the early use of 107,109Ag NMR for detecting and following the formation of coordination compounds with helical structures), chemistry involving organometallic radicals (cf. organozinc and aluminum α-diimine chemistry, development of β-lactam synthesis routes), self-assembly of organometallics to discrete aggregated species (cf. organo-Cu, -Li and cuprate chemistry), the development of palladium complexes and homogeneous metal catalysts with simple amine ligands, the synthesis of, and catalysis with, dendrimers decorated with organometallic catalysts, mimicking the active center of metallo-enzymes as well as the synthesis of organometal-lipase hybrids for catalysis. Being educated in an "eco"-system of contract research, in concert with fundamental research, the results of the above outlined items were not only published in journals with peer review (>850) but also in the patent literature (>40). Most important were the results reported in over 85 PhD theses that I had the privilege to supervise as PI. The references refer to key-papers describing this body of work. The respective reference numbers are given at the heading of each paragraph. The full list of publications in peer reviewed Journals can be found in http://www.gerardvankoten.nl and www.uu.nl/staff/GvanKoten.