Henri Boris Kagan (born 15 December 1930) is currently an

emeritus professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

at the

Université Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (), also known as the University of Paris — XI (or as the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of

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 ...

. His discoveries have had far-reaching impacts on the

pharmaceutical industry The pharmaceutical industry is a medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or self-administered by) patients for curing ...

. He graduated from the Sorbonne and

École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris Chimie ParisTech, officially École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris (; "National High School of Chemistry of Paris") and also known as ENSCP or Chimie Paris, is a prestigious grande école and a constituent college of PSL Research Univer ...

and carried out his PhD under J. Jacques at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

. Subsequently, he was a research associate with A. Horeau. He then moved to

Orsay Orsay () is a Communes of France, commune in the Essonne Departments of France, department in Île-de-France in northern France. It is located in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. A fortifie ...

where he is emeritus professor. A landmark in his research was the development of C₂-symmetric ligands, e.g.,

DIOP DIOP (2,3-''O''-isopropylidene-2,3-dihydroxy-1,4-bis(diphenylphosphino)butane) is an organophosphorus compound that is used as a chiral ligand in asymmetric catalysis. It is a white solid that is soluble in organic solvents. DIOP is prepared fr ...

for

. This discovery led to the discovery of many related ligands that support

catalyst 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 ...

s used in a variety of practical applications. In 1986, he observed the first examples of

nonlinear effects In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathem ...

in asymmetric catalysis and developed mathematical models to describe the behavior of such catalysts. This was a major discovery, making non-linear effects a field of chemistry in its own right: not only are they a tool for understanding molecular mechanisms, but they are also discussed in the context of the origin of life (asymmetric amplification).

Honors

Dr Kagan is a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

and has won many awards in the field including: Silver Medal of the French National Scientific Research Center, Prelog Medal, August-Wihelm-von Hoffman Medal,

Nagoya Medal of Organic Chemistry is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the fourth-most populous city in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020, and the principal city of the Chūkyō metropolitan area, which is the third-most populous metropolit ...

, Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry,

Wolf Prize in Chemistry The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Arts. The Wo ...

, Grand Prix de la Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie,

Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

, JSPS Award for Eminent Scientists, Ryoji Noyori Prize, and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Medal. In 2001 controversy was caused when Kagan was not given the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

which had been shared by

K. Barry Sharpless Karl Barry Sharpless (born April 28, 1941) is an American stereochemist. He is a two-time Nobel laureate in chemistry, known for his work on stereoselective reactions and click chemistry. Sharpless was awarded half of the 2001 Nobel Prize i ...

of the

Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institute has over 170 laboratories employing 2,100 scientists, tec ...

in La Jolla, California,

Ryōji Noyori is a Japanese chemist. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001, Noyori shared a half of the prize with William S. Knowles for the study of chirally catalyzed hydrogenations; the second half of the prize went to K. Barry Sharpless for his ...

Nagoya University , abbreviated to or NU, is a Japanese national research university located in Chikusa-ku, Nagoya. It was established in 1939 as the last of the nine Imperial Universities in the then Empire of Japan, and is now a Designated National Universit ...

, Japan, and William S. Knowles, formerly of

Monsanto Company The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best-known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in ...

in St Louis, Missouri, for work on catalytic asymmetric synthesis. It was thought that as Kagan was one of the pioneers of the field he too should have been honoured. However, as the prize can be given to a maximum of three people he was left off.

References

Short biography of Kagan
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kagan, Henri 1930 births Living people People from Boulogne-Billancourt 20th-century French chemists Members of the French Academy of Sciences University of Paris alumni Academic staff of the University of Paris Wolf Prize in Chemistry laureates Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates