Robert Bergman

Robert George Bergman is an American chemist. He is Professor of the Graduate School and Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

Early life and education

Born in Chicago, Robert Bergman was the son of Joseph J. and Stella Bergman, née Horowitz. In 1963 he graduated from Carleton College with a degree in chemistry. Under the supervision of Jerome A. Berson, he received a PhD in 1966 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1966 to 1967 he was a NATO postdoctoral fellow at Ronald Breslow's laboratory at Columbia University, New York City. From 1977 to 2002, he was a chemistry professor at the University of California, Berkeley and since 1978 has also been a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2002 he was appointed Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. Bergman transitioned to Emeritus status in 2016 and now holds to the titles of Professor of the Graduate School and Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor Emeritus. This reaction later played a major role in understanding the mode of action of enediyne antitumor antibiotics. Since the mid-1970s, Bergman has also been working in the field of organometallic chemistry. He contributed to the synthesis and reaction of organometallic complexes and investigated organometallic compounds with metal-oxygen and metal-nitrogen bonds. He also discovered the first soluble organometallic complexes of the transition metals, to which the addition of a saturated hydrocarbon (C-H activation, C-H insertion) succeeded.

Personal life Since June 17, 1965, Bergman has been married. The Bergmans have two sons.

Awards and honours 1969: Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship 1970: Teacher-Scholar Award (Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation) 1991: MERIT Award (National Institutes of Health) 2004: Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) 2007: NAS Award in Chemical Sciences (National Academy of Sciences) 2013: George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry 2014: Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Distinguished Schulich Lectureship Award 2014: Welch Award in Chemistry 2014: Royal Society of Chemistry Robert Robinson Award 2017: Wolf Prize in Chemistry

Memberships 1963: Phi Beta Kappa 1964: Phi Lambda Upsilon 1966: Sigma Xi 1984: National Academy of Sciences 1984: American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1995: California Academy of Sciences 1999: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Literature Who's Who in America. 2007, , p. 341.