Professor Paul Knochel, Ludwig Maximilians University (LUM), Munich, Germany, celebrates his 65th birthday on November 15, 2020.

His research interests include the development of novel organometallic reagents and methods for use in organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, and natural product synthesis. Paul Knochel develops, among other things, methods for the targeted modification of organic molecules to optimize their biological-pharmaceutical effectiveness. He does this using inexpensive and harmless organometallic compounds. The process for the production of the “Knochel metallizations” named after him is groundbreaking for both the academic and the industrial sector.

 

Paul Knochel, born in Strasbourg, France, in 1955, studied at the University of Strasbourg, and gained his Ph.D. from the ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) Zürich, Switzerland, under the supervision of Dieter Seebach. Paul Knochel spent four years at University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France, and one year of post-doctoral studies at Princeton University, NJ, USA. In 1987, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA, and in 1991, he became Full Professor at this university. He moved to Philipps University, Marburg, Germany, as Professor in Organic Chemistry, before taking up his current position at Ludwig Maximilians University, in 1999.

Among many other awards he received the Otto-Bayer Prize in 1995, the Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) in 1996, the Dr. Paul Janssen Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis in 2004, the Karl-Ziegler-Preis of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) in 2009, the EROS (Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis) Best Reagent Award in 2011, the Gold Nagoya Medal of Organic Chemistry in 2012, the Chevalier dans l’Ordre national du Mérite in 2013, and the Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods in 2014.

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Selected Publications

• J. Skotnitzki, A. Kremsmair, D. Keefer, Y. Gong, R. de Vivie-Riedle, P. Knochel, Stereoselective Csp3 -Csp2 Cross-Couplings of Chiral Secondary Alkylzinc Reagents with Alkenyl and Aryl Halides, Angew Chem Int Ed. 2020, 59(1), 320–324. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201910397
• B. Heinz, D. Djukanovic, M. A. Ganiek, B. Martin, B. Schenkel, P. Knochel, Selective Acylation of Aryl- and Heteroarylmagnesium Reagents with Esters in Continuous Flow, Org Lett. 2020, 22(2), 493-496. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.orglett.9b04254
• M. Balkenhohl, H. Jangra, T. Lenz, M. Ebeling, H. Zipse, K. Karaghiosoff, P. Knochel, Lewis Acid Directed Regioselective Metalations of Pyridazine, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58(27), 9244–9247. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201903839
• Tobias Bluemke, Yi-Hung Chen, Zhihua Peng, Paul Knochel, Preparation of functionalized organoaluminiums by direct insertion of aluminium to unsaturated halides, Nature Chemistry 2010, 2(4), 313–318. https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.590
• Tobias Thaler, Benjamin Haag, Andrei Gavryushin, Katrin Schober, Evelyn Hartmann, Ruth M Gschwind, Hendrik Zipse, Peter Mayer, Paul Knochel, Highly diastereoselective Csp3–Csp2 Negishi cross-coupling with 1,2-, 1,3- and 1,4-substituted cycloalkylzinc compounds, Nature Chemistry 2010, 125–130. https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.505
• Milica Jaric, Benjamin Haag, Andreas Unsinn, Konstantin Karaghiosoff, Paul Knochel, Highly Selective Metalations of Pyridines and Related Heterocycles Using New Frustrated Lewis Pairs or tmp-Zinc and tmp-Magnesium Bases with BF₃⋅OEt₂, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2010, 49, 5451–5455. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201002031