Organic Chemistry Seminar

Tuesday, February 26th
Professor Samir Zard
"Some New Perspectives for Organic Synthesis"


4:15pm - 5:15pm
Braun Lecture Hall
S.G.Mudd Chemistry Building
Stanford University



This seminar is free and open to the public. All Stanford University Chemistry students are encouraged to attend this special event.

About the seminar:
Our research group is mostly concerned with the discovery and development of new reactions and processes that could be useful in organic synthesis. As is usually the case in scientific research, the interplay between conjecture and chance observation underlies much of our work. Unexpected events often bring a fresh lighting to the system being examined and open doors hitherto unsuspected. Misconception has thus played an important role by allowing us to uncover a number of new radical and non radical reactions of some generality involving sulfur compounds, acetylenes, oximes, and related derivatives: we simply followed the logical consequences of our observations and went where the chemistry took us. In this lecture, the story behind the discovery of some of these reactions will be presented and the various mechanistic and synthetic implications will be discussed.


About Zard:
Samir Z. Zard was born in 1955 in Ife, Nigeria. His training as a chemist started at the American University of Beirut, then at Imperial College, London, and finally at the Université Paris-Sud, France, where he received his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Sir Derek Barton. His main research interests concern the study and development of new reactions and processes, with a special interest in radicals, organosulfur derivatives, alkynes, and nitro compounds.

Questions
Please contact Patricia Dwyer at 650-723-4770.