Plenary and invited lectures presented at the 12th IUPAC International
Symposium on Organometallic Chemistry Directed Towards Organic Synthesis
(OMCOS-12), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 6-10 July 2003
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Preface
The 12th IUPAC International Symposium on Organometallic Chemistry Directed
Towards Organic Synthesis (OMCOS-12) was held in Ontario, Canada, from
6-10 July 2003. This was the second time that OMCOS was held in Canada,
the first occurring in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia
in 1987. This meeting probably stood out as being unique in the history
of this conference due to the outbreak of the SARS epidemic and the
global concern with spread of the disease. This situation placed a great
deal of strain both on the organizers of the conference and the participants.
Despite the SARS problem, there still were over 250 participants from
more than 25 different countries. This conference reflected the current
state-of-the-art in organometallic chemistry as it is used in organic
synthesis. A perusal of the list of plenary, invited, and short-talk
lectures from scientists around the world highlights the strength, diversity,
and novelty with which this science is being practiced.
There were seven plenary lectures, delivered by Antonio Echavarren,
Tamio Hayashi, Philip Kocienski, Günter Helmchen, John Hartwig,
Ilan Marek, and Koichi Mikami. These lectures focused on control and
amplication of chirality by transition-metal catalysis, activation of
alkynes by transition metals, novel carbon –carbon bond formations
using transition-metal catalysts, and the uses of organometallic reagents
in natural products synthesis. The recipient of this year’s OMCOS
award (previously known as the Springer award) is Kyoko Nozaki from
the University of Tokyo. In her award lecture, she described an overview
of asymmetric catalytic synthesis of polyketones and polycarbonates
using a chiral BINAPHOS –Pd complex.
Along with the plenary and OMCOS award lectures, invited lectures also
featured recent advances in the field of oragnometallic chemistry in
organic synthesis by 15 distinguished chemists (Pher Andersson, Geoffrey
Coates, Anny Jutand, Chul-Ho Jun, Guy Lloyd-Jones, Andrei Yudin, Warren
Piers, Shane Krska, Walter Leitner, SonBinh Nguyen, Shengming Ma, Claudio
Trombini, Ross Widenhoefer, Marc Lemaire, and Peter Kündig). The
themes of these lectures involved asymmetric synthesis using oragnometallic
reagents, design of new catalysts for organic synthesis, new C-C and
C-heteroatom bond-forming reactions, structural and mechanistic aspects
of organometallic chemistry, and organometallics in materials research.
In additions, there were 25 short lectures and about 120 poster presentations.
The lecture sessions of OMCOS-12 were held in the Isabel Bader Theatre
on the campus of the University of Toronto. The theatre is a gift from
Alfred Bader, founder of the Aldrich Chemical Company, in honor of his
wife, Isabel. Alfred was educated at Queen’s University in Kingston,
Ontario, approximately 300 km east of Toronto. The contribution of Alfred,
through Aldrich, to the chemistry community is an important one since
Aldrich was one of the few companies that,in the early days of organometallic
chemistry, made many of the organometallic reagents that we take for
granted readily available.
The OMCOS awards were made possible by the generous donations by Springer
Verlag and Dr. Yung-Tsai Yen from the Yen Chuang Foundation. The Yen
Chuang Foundation was established in 1986 and supports community and
cultural activities, science, and human rights. Dr. Yen obtained his
B.Sc. (chemistry) from the National Taiwan University and his Ph.D.
(chemistry) at the University of Chicago, and he is currently the president
of Micro Lithography, Inc. Last but not least, OMCOS-12 would not have
been a successful conference, under such a difficult situation because
of the SARS problem, without the generous support by the following sponsors:
Merck Frosst, Astra Zeneca, Thieme Chemistry, Boehringer Ingelheim,
Royal Society of Chemistry, Sigma-Aldrich, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis,
Brantford Chemicals, Solvias, McNeil, Hoffman-LaRoche, Aventis, BioVectra
DCL, Pfizer, Albany Molecular Research, Inc., Lilly, Torcan, and the
University of Toronto.
William Tam
Conference Editor
Organizing Committee: M. Lautens (Chair,University
of Toronto); R. Friesen (Co-Chair, Merck Frosst); R. Batey (University
of Toronto); A. Charette (University of Montreal); E. Fillion (University
of Waterloo); A. Yudin (University of Toronto); W. Tam (Publications,
Abstracts and Scheduling, University of Guelph); S. McClelland (Conference
Coordinator, University of Toronto); K. Porter (Conference Secretariat,
University of Toronto); M. Yoo (Web site, University of Toronto).
International Advisory Committee: I.P. Beletskaya
(Moscow); D. Bellus (Basel); P.H. Dixneuf (Rennes); J.-P. Genet (Paris);
R.W. Hoffmann (Marburg); G. van Koten (Utrecht); B.H. Lipshutz (Santa
Barbara); T.-Y. Luh (Taipei); A. de Meijere (Göttingen); S.-I.
Murahashi (Osaka); E.-I. Negishi (Purdue); A. Ricci (Bologna); H. Yamamoto
(Chicago).
National Advisory Committee: H. Alper (University
of Ottawa); A. Charette (University of Montreal); R. Friesen (Merck
Frosst); M. Lautens (University of Toronto); E. Piers (University of
British Columbia).
