Christopher "Kit" Colin Cummins (born February 28, 1966) is an American chemist, currently the Henry Dreyfus Professor at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. He has made contributions to the coordination chemistry of transition metal nitrides,

phosphide In chemistry, a phosphide is a compound containing the ion or its equivalent. Many different phosphides are known, with widely differing structures. Most commonly encountered on the binary phosphides, i.e. those materials consisting only of pho ...

s, and

carbide In chemistry, a carbide usually describes a compound composed of carbon and a metal. In metallurgy, carbiding or carburizing is the process for producing carbide coatings on a metal piece. Interstitial / Metallic carbides The carbides of th ...

s. :

Early life and education

Cummins was born in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, Massachusetts, on February 28, 1966. He attended

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont, United States. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalists, Middlebury w ...

and

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

before transferring to

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

where he performed undergraduate research under the direction of Peter T. Wolczanski. At Cornell, Cummins conducted research on the reactivity of low-coordinate zirconium and titanium complexes bearing bulky silanamide ligands (^tBu₃SiNH⁻), with small molecules such as methane, benzene, and carbon monoxide. After graduating from Cornell with an AB degree in 1989, Cummins went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to obtain his PhD in chemistry in 1993 under the direction of Richard R. Schrock. Cummins conducted doctoral research on the synthesis of low-coordinate transition metal complexes bearing trialkylsilated variants of the

tris(2-aminoethyl)amine Tris(2-aminoethyl)amine is the organic compound with the chemical formula, formula N(CH2CH2NH2)3. This colourless liquid is soluble in water and is highly basic, consisting of a tertiary amine center and three pendant primary amine groups. Tris(2- ...

ligand. In collaboration with Robert E. Cohen, he also discovered a new technique for synthesizing nanoclusters of metal sulfide semiconductors within block copolymer microdomains.

Independent career

After receiving his PhD in 1993, Cummins was invited to stay at MIT as an assistant professor and was later promoted to full professor in 1996. Cummins became the Henry Dreyfus Professor in Chemistry in 2015.

Research

In one contribution, Cummins and coworkers described routes to simple phosphorus compounds including a low temperature route to

diphosphorus Diphosphorus is an inorganic chemical with the chemical formula . Unlike nitrogen, its lighter pnictogen neighbor which forms a stable N2 molecule with a nitrogen to nitrogen triple bond, phosphorus prefers a tetrahedral form P4 because P-P pi-bo ...

: :

Honors and awards

In 2007, Cummins was awarded the 2007 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences by

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

and the 2007 F. Albert Cotton Award by the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

. In 2008, Cummins was elected a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts & Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other F ...

. In 2013, Cummins was awarded the Ludwig Mond Award by the

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the ...

. In 2017, Cummins was elected as a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, 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 ...

. In the same year, the American Chemical Society awarded Cummins the 2017 Linus Pauling Medal in recognition of his synthetic and mechanistic studies of early-transition metal complexes.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cummins, Christopher C. Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty 21st-century American chemists Cornell University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni 1966 births