The Kharasch Lectureship is named after long-time Chicago professor Morris S. Kharasch (SB '17, Ph.D '19). Professor Kharasch was a pioneering organic chemist best known for his work with free radical additions and polymerizations, most notably the peroxide effect, which explained how an anti-Markovnikov-orientated addition could occur via free radical addition.
The Kharasch Lectureship is special in that the lecturer remains in residence at the university for three weeks. His or her stay provides an opportunity for a thorough exchange of ideas with faculty and students. In recent years, Professors Peter Dervan, Kurt Mislow, Ryoji Noyori, Jean Frechet, Dieter Seebach, Sir Derek Barton, K.C. Nicolaou, David MacMillan, Dirk Trauner, Phil Baran, and Robert Grubbs were Kharasch Visiting Professors.
Biography: Morris Selig Kharasch (1895 - 1957) was born in Kremenetz, Ukraine on August 24, 1895. Though his family was comfortably situated, he and his brothers left Russia to take advantage of education and other opportunities available in the United States. Kharasch came to the US when he was 13, aided by an older brother who had preceeded him. He graduated from Crane High School (Chicago, IL) in 1913, and continued his education at the University of Chicago, where he received his BS in 1917, and his PhD in 1919, despite spending the intervening years in the Chemical Warfare Service of the US Army. After receiving his doctorate, he held a National Research Council Fellowship at the University of Chicago until 1922, when he accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Maryland. In 1936, Kharasch founded the Journal of Organic Chemistry. He received the Presidential Merit Award in 1948 for his services to the Chemical Warfare Service during the Second World War, the Scott Award from the Franklin Institute in 1949, and the Richards Medal from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society in 1952. He also served as the American editor for Tetrahedron. In 1946, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Kharasch passed away on October 9, 1957 in Copenhagen while carrying out an assignment for the US government. He was married to Ethel May Nelson, and they had two children: a son, Robert, a lawyer in Washington, and a daughter, Elizabeth, an inorganic chemist with Bell Laboratories.
Among his many doctoral students, Kharasch mentored Herbert Brown, Frank Mayo, and George Büchi.
Previous Awardees:
2024 Guy Lloyd Jones
2023 Jin-Quan Yu
2022 Erick M. Carreira
2018 Stephen L. Buchwald
2017 Shankar Balasubramanian
2016 Robert Grubbs
2015 Phil S. Baran
2014 Dirk Trauner
2013 Wilfred van der Donk
2012 Makoto Fujita
2011 David MacMillan
2009 JoAnne Stubbe
2008 Dan Kahne
2007 B. L. (Ben) Feringa
2006 Tamio Havashi
2005 William Degrado
2003 Barry Trost
2000 Hisashi Yamamoto
2000 Dennis Dougherty
1999 Guy Bertrand
1998 Jean-Pierre Sauvage
1997 Mary Anne Fox
1996 Jean M.J. Frechet
1994 Kyriacos Nicolaou
1993 John T. Groves
1992 Manfred T. Reetz
1991 Ryoji Noyori
1990 A.L.J. Beckwith
1989 Kurt Mislow
1988 Peter B. Dervan
1987 Sir Derek Barton
1986 Dieter Seebach
1985 Jeremy R. Knowles
1984 Josef Michl
1983 Martin Saunders
1982 Jack Baldwin
1982 Alan R. Battersby, F.R.S.
1979 Teruaki Mukaiyama
1978 H.E. Simmons
1976 Gunther Wilke