The Dr. Paul Janssen prize for Creativity In Organic Synthesis is really an outstanding recognition for our synthetic contributions in zinc and magnesium organometallic chemistry.
Paul Knochel was born 1955 in Strasbourg (France). He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Strasbourg (France) and his Ph.D at the ETH-Zürich with Prof. D. Seebach.
He spent 4 years at the CNRS at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris with Prof. J.-F. Normant and one year of post-doctoral studies at Princeton University in the laboratory of Prof. M. F. Semmelhack. In 1987, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1991, he became Full Professor at this University and in 1992, he moved to Philipps-University at Marburg (Germany) as C4-Professor in Organic Chemistry. In 1999, he moved to the Chemistry Department of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (Germany).
His research interests include the development of novel organometallic reagents and methods for use in organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis and natural product synthesis. Prof. Knochel received many distinguished prices as e.g. the Berthelot Medal of the Academie des Sciences (Paris), the IUPAC Thieme Prize, the Otto-Bayer-Prize, the Leibniz-Prize, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, Karl-Ziegler-Prize, the Nagoya Gold Medal, the H. C. Brown Award and Paul Karrer gold medal. He is member of the Académie des Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Science, the German Academy of Sciences Leopodina, and the Center for Advanced Studies. In 2009 he received the ERC grant “New Organometallics”. He is author of 900 publications (H-index = 80).
Paul Knochel
