Prof. Fraser Fleming, Ph.D.

Fraser Fleming is Professor of Chemistry at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA.

He is one of the leading experts in the field of nitrile chemistry. Although this important area of organic chemistry was thought to have been exhaustively researched, Fraser Fleming's work contributed significantly to groundbreaking new developments.

During his three-month guest period in Munich from the beginning of January to the end of March 2010, Fraser Fleming will work with Prof. Dr. Paul Knochel of the Chair for Organic & Organometallic Chemistry of the LMU. As part of a research project on the subject of "New Organometallic Compounds", for which Paul Knochel received an Advanced Investigator Grant of the ERC in 2008, the two scientists aim to combine the Grignard reaction developed further by Paul Knochel with the method developed by Fraser Fleming for stereoselective alkylation of metalliferous nitrile connections. The Grignard reaction involves a carbon-halogen connection reacting with metals to form an organometallic connection.