MUNICH, Germany—For his novel research and pioneering work in combining boron and silicon with organic molecules, Martin Oestreich, a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, has received the prestigious Wacker Silicone Award.
He will receive the award July 7 at a presentation in Toulouse, France, at the International Symposium on Chemistry July 7. The award includes a stipend of 10,000 euros.
"By combining organic chemistry and silicon chemistry, Martin Oestreich has flung open the door to new research areas in catalysis," said Christoph Kowitz, head of Wacker's corporate research and development department. "The results of his research have enormous implications for science and also, in the long term, for us, (especially) when it comes to making even greater use of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in our product portfolio in the future."
Oestreich is a professor of synthesis and catalysis at the Technical University of Berlin. He initially gained attention in the organic chemistry field for his research in bond activation as it relates to the chemistry of silylium ions, according to a June 22 release from Wacker.
He also has worked in the field of "transfer hydrosilylation, carbon-hydrogen silylation of aromatic compounds and the enantioselective silylation of alcohols," Wacker said.
"Oestreich successfully synthesized a chiral hydridosilane that made it possible to transfer chirality to carbon, thereby enabling its use in the kinetic, non-enzymatic and reagent-controlled resolution of racemic mixtures of alcohols," Wacker stated.
Oestreich also pioneered a ferrocene-stabilized silylium ion "in which the electron deficiency in the silicon atom is compensated not only by the iron atom on its own, but by the entire metallocenyl group."
All of these discoveries are relevant for industrial use, enabling safe handling of hydrosilanes, "which can be highly volatile, pyrophoric and explosive," Wacker stated.
He is the 21st winner of Wacker's Silicone Award. Oestreich, 49, was born in Pforzheim, Germany.
He has led the Emmy Noether junior research group of the German Research Foundation at the University of Freiburg. He is an Einstein professor and a member of the Cluster of Excellence "Unifying Concepts in Catalysis (UniCat)."
Previous winners of the Wacker Silicone Award include:
• 2018: Herbert W. Roesky (University of Goettingen, Germany);
• 2016: Alexander Filippou (University of Bonn, Germany);
• 2014 Akira Sekiguchi (University of Tsukuba, Japan);
• 2011 Matthias Driess (Technische Universitat Berlin, Germany);
• 2009 Ulrich Schubert (Technical University of Vienna, Austria);
• 2007 Yitzhak Apeloig (Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa);
• 2005 Mitsuo Kira (Tohoku University, Japan);
• 2003 Don Tilley (University of California at Berkeley);
• 2001 Manfred Weidenbruch (University of Oldenburg, Germany);
• 1998 Robert Corriu (Universite de Montpellier, France);
• 1996 Hubert Schmidbaur (Technical University of Munich, Germany);
• 1994 Edwin Hengge;
• 1992 Richard Mueller and Eugene Rochow;
• 1991 Hideki Sakurai (Science University of Tokyo, Japan);
• 1989 Robert West (University of Wisconsin);
• 1988 Nils Wiberg and Reinhold Tacke (University of Wurzburg, Germany); and
• 1987 Peter Jutzi (Bielefeld University, Germany) and Norbert Auner (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany).
