MacArthur Fellow Phil S. Baran will deliver the milestone address on simplifying organic synthesis.
The UC Santa Barbara Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is celebrating a half-century of honoring one of its foundational figures. On Tuesday, May 12, the department will host the 50th annual B.R. Baker Memorial Lecture, featuring guest speaker Phil S. Baran, a professor at Scripps Research.
The lecture, titled "Simplifying Synthesis With Radical Cross-Coupling," will take place from 4 to 5 p.m. in Henley Hall 1010. A catered reception will immediately follow. The event is open to all students, staff, faculty and affiliates.
The annual seminar honors the legacy of Professor B.R. Baker, who served as a professor of chemistry at UC Santa Barbara from 1966 until his death in 1971. A pioneer in his field, his graduate work on the structural elucidation and synthesis of cannabis constituents marked the beginning of a prolific career in the chemistry of natural products. Perhaps his greatest contribution to medicinal chemistry was the concept of active-site-directed irreversible enzyme inhibition of substrate-identical enzymes.
This year's guest speaker, Phil S. Baran, brings a wealth of expertise in organic synthesis to the milestone event. His laboratory focuses on circumventing the bottlenecks of sustainable, scalable synthesis to allow organic molecules to be more rapidly transformed into viable therapies.
Baran's impact on the field has been widely recognized. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2013. His numerous accolades also include the ACS Elias J. Corey Award in 2016, the Blavatnik National Laureate in Chemistry in 2016 and the Danisco Science Excellence Medal Award in 2022. Furthermore, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.
Attendees will learn how unconventional radical disconnections can be incorporated into synthetic design plans, challenging the historical perception of radicals as uncontrollable species.
Members of B.R. Baker's family will attend for this 50th-anniversary milestone. For more information, visit the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry's Annual Seminars page.
Photo credits: Tony Mastres / UC Santa Barbara (Henley Hall); courtesy of the Scripps Research (Phil S. Baran).