Maurice S. Brookhart (born 1942) is an American chemist, and professor of chemistry at the

University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...

since 2015. Brookhart received his bachelor's degree from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

in 1964. He received his PhD in 1968 from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the Californ ...

, in physical organic chemistry where his thesis advisor was

Saul Winstein Saul Winstein (October 8, 1912 – November 23, 1969) was a Jewish Canadian chemist who discovered the '' Winstein reaction.'' He argued a non-classical cation was needed to explain the stability of the norbornyl cation. This fueled a debat ...

. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1968 and a

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...

postdoctoral fellowship at

Southampton University , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

, England. In 1969, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, where he stayed until 2015, when he joined the University of Houston as a professor of Chemistry. His research group is noted for its research in the general area of synthetic and mechanistic

organometallic chemistry Organometallic chemistry is the study of organometallic compounds, chemical compounds containing at least one chemical bond between a carbon atom of an organic molecule and a metal, including alkali, alkaline earth, and transition metals, and s ...

. A recent major thrust has been the development of

post-metallocene catalyst A post-metallocene catalyst is a kind of catalyst for the polymerization of olefins, i.e., the industrial production of some of the most common plastics. "Post-metallocene" refers to a class of homogeneous catalysts that are not metallocenes. This ...

s based upon late transition metal (Ni and Pd) complexes for olefin coordination polymerization. They carry out their mechanistic investigation of the polymerization reactions primarily by low temperature IR and NMR spectroscopies. The work provides a detailed understanding of catalyst resting states and relative intermediates. A second major focus of Brookhart’s group concerns fundamental studies of C-H and C-C bond activations by transition metal complexes and the incorporation of these bond activation steps into catalytic cycles. They have successfully demonstrated catalysis of the ortho-alkylation of aromatic ketones, alkyl aldehyde isomerization, hydroacylation, and the dehydrogenation of alkoxy silanes to generate silyl enol ethers. Recent work on alkane metathesis has received attention.Goldman, Alan S.; Roy, Amy H.; Huang, Zheng; Ahuja, Ritu; Schinski, William; Brookhart, Maurice. Catalytic Alkane Metathesis by Tandem Alkane Dehydrogenation-Olefin Metathesis. Science (Washington, DC, United States)(2006), 312(5771), 257–261. He has over 300 publications in the scientific literature and holds over 22 US patents. He is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brookhart, Maurice Living people Johns Hopkins University alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 21st-century American chemists 1942 births University of Houston faculty