This award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Program is made to Dr. Jack Halpern of the Chemistry Department, University of Chicago, for studies in the general area of kinetics and mechanisms of reactions for organometallic compounds. Five areas of investigation will be pursued: asymmetric catalytic hydrogenation reactions; dissociation energies of transition metal-alkyl bonds; catalytic properties of transition metal polyhydrides; alkyl transfer and iron-carbon bond dissociation energies for alkyl iron porphyrin compounds; and oxidative addition reactions of Rh and Ir metalloporphyrins. The asymmetric hydrogenation of acrylic acid derivatives and transfer hydrogenation reactions will be investigated. Studies on the polyhydrides will include reactions involving hydrogen transfer, hydrogenation, and reductive elimination. %%% Some catalysts, like enzymes, promote reactions in which not only a certain arrangement of atoms is achieved, but only one of two possible three-dimensional arrangements. Understanding the mechanism of such "asymmetric catalysis" reactions is important in order to be able to develop new catalysts which can behave with this specificity in a variety of reactions. Asymmetric catalysts promise to find broad use in organic synthesis, biological modeling studies, and the pharmaceutical industry. Iron porphyrin studies may have relevance to reactions of iron-containing enzymes.
