Bergman Wins Welch Award

For his contributions to organometallic chemistry research, Robert G. Bergman, Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will receive the 2014 Welch Award in Chemistry. The Welch Foundation, based in Houston, supports fundamental chemical research at educational institutions. It gives out the $300,000 award yearly to “foster and encourage basic chemical research and to recognize, in a substantial manner, the value of chemical research contributions for the benefit of mankind.” Bergman, 71, garnered this year’s prize for discovering transition-metal complexes that can activate a hydrocarbon’s C–H bond—one of the most intractable, but crucial, processes in organic synthesis. Accomplishing this feat allows chemists to attach myriad species to the now-available carbon atoms and create a wealth of industrially and pharmaceutically useful compounds. “He really is one of the world’s most impressive organometallic chemists,” says Marye Ann Fox, chair of the Welch Found...