Chemistry Department
Colloquium: Spring, 2012
Friday, May 11; 3:30
Seminar Hall (room 1315 Chemistry)
The Application of Physical Organic Methods to the
Investigation of Organometallic Reaction Mechanisms
Robert G. Bergman
Professor of Chemistry, UC-Berkeley
The modern era of organotransition metal chemistry arguably began with the synthesis and
characterization of ferrocene in the early 1950s. For the following twenty years, the field grew
substantially in both industrial and academic laboratories. While industry efforts relied on a
trial-and-error approach to develop and improve catalysts, academic investigators focused on
the structural characterization of new organotransition metal complexes and descriptive
studies of their reactions. Although many unusual transformations were discovered during this
period, the mechanisms of most of these reactions were poorly understood. In the late 1960s
and 1970s, a few investigators began to address this dearth of mechanistic understanding.
Inorganic chemists who were experts in kinetic investigations afforded one avenue towards
gaining insights into these organometallic reactions. Yet another path was taken by young
chemists trained in the physical organic tradition of people like Paul Bartlett, William Doering,
Saul Winstein and Jerome Berson. These groups - including mine at UC Berkeley and Charles
Casey’s in this department - began to tackle the problem of both discovering new
organometallic chemistry and unraveling the mechanisms of these reactions. During the
course of our investigations, we made significant inroads into the discovery and understanding of processes such as alkyne
cyclization, nitric oxide migratory insertion and addition of metal nitrosyl complexes to alkenes, organometallic cluster complex
formation, alkyne hydroamination, and carbon-hydrogen bond activation.
This colloquium will provide a personal overview of this work and a historical perspective of our contributions to mechanistic
understanding in organotransition metal chemistry during the past 35 years.
Robert Bergman earned his Ph.D. at UW-Madison - in this department - in l966 with Jerome A. Berson. He
started his independent career at Caltech, and moved to UC Berkeley in l978. He is now a Gerald E.K.
Branch Distinguished Professor. His awards include a Sloan Fellowship, Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award,
Arthur C. Cope Award, the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, and the DoE Lawrence
Award in Chemistry. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and AAAS. He was trained as an
Organic Chemist and, in the 1970s, broadened his research to include organometallic chemistry and
catalysis. He is probably best known for his discovery of ene-diyne to benzene diradical cyclizations and his
work on carbon-hydrogen bond activation.
Please stay for refreshments at about 4:30 in the Charter Street Atrium