René Peters (born August 26, 1971, in

Simmerath Simmerath () is a municipality in the Aachen (district), district of Aachen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located approximately 20 km south-east of Aachen, near the border to Belgium. The administrative area was expanded in 1972 ...

) is a German chemist and since 2008 Professor of

Organic Chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...

at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart () is a research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with programs in civil, mechanical, ind ...

Life and work

Peters studied chemistry at

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), in German ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen'', is a German public research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With more than 47,000 students enrolled in 144 study prog ...

from 1992 to 1997 and subsequently received his doctorate under Dieter Enders until 2000. This was followed by a stay as a postdoc at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

with

Yoshito Kishi was a Japanese chemist who was the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He was known for his contributions to the sciences of organic synthesis and total synthesis. Early life and education Kishi was born in Nagoya, Japan ...

as a

DAAD scholarship The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD; ), founded in 1925, is a joint organization of German universities and student bodies to foster their international relations. Since 1 January 2020, the president has been Joybrato Mukherjee. Organisa ...

holder. Between 2001 and 2004 he worked as a process research chemist at F. Hoffmann-La Roche LTD (Basel). From 2004 to 2008, Peters was an assistant professor at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart. The research team led by Prof. Peters is one of the leading groups in the field of cooperative

asymmetric catalysis Enantioselective synthesis, also called asymmetric synthesis, is a form of chemical synthesis. It is defined by IUPAC as "a chemical reaction (or reaction sequence) in which one or more new elements of Chirality (chemistry), chirality are formed ...

. The research is centered around the development of bi- and polyfunctional catalysts whose mode of action is inspired by

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

s, although the structure of the artificial catalysts is much simpler than those of enzymes. In the Peters catalysts, a

Lewis acid A Lewis acid (named for the American physical chemist Gilbert N. Lewis) is a chemical species that contains an empty orbital which is capable of accepting an electron pair from a Lewis base to form a Lewis adduct. A Lewis base, then, is any ...

often cooperates with charged, non-metallic functionalities such as

ammonium Ammonium is a modified form of ammonia that has an extra hydrogen atom. It is a positively charged (cationic) polyatomic ion, molecular ion with the chemical formula or . It is formed by the protonation, addition of a proton (a hydrogen nucleu ...

pyridinium Pyridinium refers to the cation . It is the conjugate acid of pyridine. Many related cations are known involving substituted pyridines, e.g. picolines, lutidines, collidines. They are prepared by treating pyridine with acids. As pyridine is often ...

or olium salts,

betaine A betaine () in chemistry is any neutral chemical compound with a positively charged cationic functional group that bears no hydrogen atom, such as a Quaternary ammonium cation, quaternary ammonium or phosphonium cation (generally: Onium compou ...

units and classical

hydrogen bond In chemistry, a hydrogen bond (H-bond) is a specific type of molecular interaction that exhibits partial covalent character and cannot be described as a purely electrostatic force. It occurs when a hydrogen (H) atom, Covalent bond, covalently b ...

donors. Through the different catalyst functional groups, simultaneous activation and a precise spatial alignment of both reactants is often possible, so that high catalytic activity can be combined with very high stereocontrol. In addition to the development of catalysts for asymmetric

catalysis Catalysis () is the increase in rate of a chemical reaction due to an added substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed by the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recycles quick ...

, the Peters research group investigates their mechanistic mode of action in an interdisciplinary approach. The research group is also known for its development of planar chiral

metallacycle In organometallic chemistry, a metallacycle is a derivative of a carbocyclic compound wherein a metal has replaced at least one carbon center; this is to some extent similar to heterocycles. Metallacycles appear frequently as reactive intermediates ...

s, in which an intramolecular cooperation of two metal centers could often be used.

Life and work

References

External links