Professor Marc Taillefer, Research Director at the CNRS, Montpellier, France, has been elected President of the French Chemical Society (SCF; Société Chimique de France) from 2018 to 2021. He succeeds Gilberte Chambaud-Debrabant, Professor Emeritus, University of Marne la Vallée, Paris, France.
Marc Taillefer’s first day in office was December 4, 2018. To show his commitment to the next generation of chemists, one of his first activities was to install the position of a Vice President – Young Chemists. In addition, he installed a Vice President – Industry and a Vice President – Divisions/Regional Sections.
Marc Taillefer studied chemistry and earned his Ph.D. from the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, under the supervision of Igor Tchatchenko and Jean‐Jacques Brunet in 1989. From 1990 to 1991, he was a postdoc at the Technische Universität München, Germany, with Wolfgang A. Herrmann. He became a CNRS researcher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM) in 1992 and CNRS Research Director in 2004. Marc Taillefer is currently the Head of the Architectures Moléculaires et Matériaux Nanostructurés team (AM2N) at the Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier (ICGM)/ENSCM.
Among many other commitments, Marc Taillefer was President of the French Chemical Society’s Organic Chemistry Division from 2012 to 2015. He was awarded the Grand Prix Emile Jungfleisch Académie des Sciences of the French Academy of Sciences in 2017 and the European Sustainable Chemistry Award in 2012, among many other honors.
His research focuses on the discovery of new methodologies in the field of organic synthesis and homogeneous catalysis (copper or iron-catalyzed arylation of nucleophiles for C–N, C–O, and C–C bond formation), as well as phosphorus chemistry (synthesis, reactivity, and applications of phosphonium ylides).
© photo: Juliette Agnel
Selected Publications by Marc Taillefer
- Henri-Jean Cristau, Pascal P. Cellier, Jean-Francis Spindler, Marc Taillefer, Highly Efficient and Mild Copper-Catalyzed N- and C-Arylations with Aryl Bromides and Iodides, Chem. Eur. J. 2004, 10, 5607–5622. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.200400582
- N. Xia, M. Taillefer, A very simple copper-catalyzed synthesis of anilines by employing aqueous ammonia, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2009, 48(2), 337–339. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.200802569
- M. P. Drapeau, I. Fabre, L. Grimaud, I. Ciofini, T. Ollevier, M. Taillefer, Transition-metal-free α-arylation of enolizable aryl ketones and mechanistic evidence for a radical process, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 10587–10591. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201502332
- Stephen Hyde, Janis Veliks, Benoît Liégault, David Grassi, Marc Taillefer, Véronique Gouverneur, Copper-Catalyzed Insertion into Heteroatom–Hydrogen Bonds withTrifluorodiazoalkanes, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 3785–3789. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201511954
- Luca Alessandro Perego, Rémi Blieck, Antoine Groué, Florian Monnier, Marc Taillefer, Ilaria Ciofini, Laurence Grimaud, Copper-Catalyzed Hydroamination of Allenes from Mechanistic Understanding to Methodology Development,
ACS Catal. 2017, 7, 4253–4264. https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.7b00911 - Martin Pichette Drapeau, A. Tlili, Y. Zaid, D. Toummini, F. Ouazzani Chahdi J.-M. Sotitopoulos, T. Ollevier, M Taillefer, Transition‐Metal‐Free Synthesis of Biarylmethanes from Aryl Iodides and Benzylic Ketones, Chem. Eur. J. 2018, 24(66),17449–17453. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.201804415
Also of Interest
- Dr. Vicki Gardiner, Medicines Australia, Deakin, Australia, is the new president of RACI, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, since November 1, 2018. She is the second woman to be elected President of the RACI.
- Professor Izabela Nowak, is the new president of PCS, the Polish Chemical Society.
