In its announcement, the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry highlights that Professor Bach is a pioneer in enantioselective photochemistry and one of the leading experts in the field. He and his team successfully demonstrated that chirality can be introduced through photochemical transformations, both in a stoichiometric and catalytic manner.
By utilizing hydrogen bonding interactions, a temporary chiral site was created in which photochemical reactions proceeded with high enantioselectivity. Prof. Bach established the use of chiral Lewis acids for catalytic photochemical reactions and successfully developed chiral sensitizers as catalysts for visible-light-induced asymmetric photochemistry. In recent years, he has demonstrated that photochemistry can be employed to convert racemic mixtures into single enantiomers (photochemical deracemization) by using either selective triplet energy transfer or reversible hydrogen atom transfer as a vehicle to facilitate the process.
The purpose of the prize, which has been awarded since 2002, is to honor outstanding contributions to research in asymmetric synthetic chemistry.
The TUM School of Natural Sciences extends its heartfelt congratulations to Prof. Thorsten Bach for this distinguished award.
Further information and links:
- CRC article
- Announcement by the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry (Japan)
- Prof. Thorsten Bach, Chair of Organic Chemistry I
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