Alois Fürstner

Alois Fürstner is an Austrian chemist who turned alkyne metathesis from a laboratory curiosity into a routine step of complex molecule synthesis, and who has built a body of catalysis around gold, platinum, iron, chromium and ruthenium instead of relying on a single workhorse metal.Alois Fürstner 是奥地利化学家，他把炔烃复分解从实验室里的稀罕反应变成复杂分子合成的常规步骤，并用三十年时间围绕金、铂、铁、铬、钌建立起一套催化化学，而不是只依赖一种主力金属。

Since 1998 he has directed the department of organometallic chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr, where every new catalytic method is judged by whether it survives a total synthesis.自 1998 年起，他主持米尔海姆马克斯·普朗克煤炭研究所的金属有机化学部。在那里，每一种新催化方法都要经受全合成的检验才算成立。

Biography

• He was born on 23 July 1962 in Bruck an der Mur, a small town in Styria on the river Mur, and his entire scientific training took place in Austria and Switzerland.他 1962 年 7 月 23 日出生在施泰尔马克州穆尔河畔的布鲁克，一座位于穆尔河边的施泰尔马克小城。他的全部学术训练都在奥地利与瑞士完成。
• He entered the Graz University of Technology in 1980 and finished the Austrian diploma course in chemistry in 1985, a five-year programme that in that system replaced the separate bachelor and master degrees.他 1980 年进入格拉茨工业大学读化学，1985 年完成奥地利制文凭课程。这一读五年的学制在该国取代了分开的学士与硕士学位。
• His doctorate followed in 1987 in the group of Hans Weidmann, where the subject was carbohydrate chemistry, then still the standard apprenticeship for an Austrian organic chemist because sugars demand precise control of protection, deprotection and stereochemistry.1987 年他在 Hans Weidmann 课题组获得博士学位，课题属碳水化合物化学。当时这仍是奥地利有机化学家的标准训练，因为糖类要求对保护、脱保护与立体化学做精确控制。
• Instead of staying with sugars he moved into organometallic chemistry, and from 1990 to 1991 he was a postdoctoral fellow with Wolfgang Oppolzer in Geneva, whose camphor sultam auxiliary and intramolecular radical cyclizations were standard tools for setting stereocenters.他没有留在糖化学，而是转向金属有机化学。1990 至 1991 年他在日内瓦跟随 Wolfgang Oppolzer 做博士后，后者的樟脑磺内酰胺助剂与分子内自由基环化是当时设定手性中心的标准工具。
• Back in Graz he completed his habilitation in 1992 on metal-graphite compounds, the layered materials formed when alkali metals slip between graphene sheets, a subject closer to solid-state chemistry than to the synthesis he would later practice.回到格拉茨后，他于 1992 年以金属石墨化合物为题完成特许任教资格论文。这类层状材料由碱金属嵌入石墨烯层间形成，题目更靠近固体化学，而不是他后来从事的合成化学。
• In 1993 he moved to the Ruhr as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and a lecturer at the University of Dortmund, a combined post that gave him a laboratory of his own just past thirty.1993 年他迁往鲁尔区，在马克斯·普朗克煤炭研究所任课题组长，同时在多特蒙德大学任讲师。这份双重职位让他在刚过三十岁时有了自己的实验室。
• The institute had opened in 1913 as a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for coal research and had been remade by Karl Ziegler, its director from 1943 to 1969 and a Nobel laureate in 1963 for the polymerization catalysts named after him and Giulio Natta.该所 1913 年作为威廉皇帝煤炭研究所成立，后来被 Karl Ziegler 彻底改造。他 1943 至 1969 年任所长，并因与 Giulio Natta 共同发现的聚合催化剂于 1963 年获诺贝尔奖。
• Guest professorships took him to the Université Claude Bernard in Lyon in 1994 and to the École normale supérieure in Paris in 1999, both of which kept him tied to French synthesis groups.客座教职把他带到里昂第一大学（1994 年）与巴黎高等师范学院（1999 年），这两段经历让他与法国的合成化学界保持长期联系。
• In 1998, five years after arriving as a group leader, he became director of the institute and professor at the Technical University of Dortmund, the paired appointment that still binds the institute's directors to university teaching.1998 年，也就是以课题组长身份到所五年后，他出任研究所所长，并同时成为多特蒙德大学教授。这一双聘安排至今仍把该所所长与大学教学绑在一起。
• He has twice taken the rotating post of managing director, from 2009 to 2011 and from 2016 to 2017, which put the institute's administration in his hands for four of its budget years.他两度担任轮值性质的常务所长，分别是 2009 至 2011 年与 2016 至 2017 年，累计四个预算年度掌管全所行政。
• From 2017 to 2025 he was editor-in-chief of Science of Synthesis, the Thieme reference series that commissions authoritative reviews of synthetic methods, and in 2023 he presided over the 56th Bürgenstock Conference.2017 至 2025 年他担任 Thieme 出版社《Science of Synthesis》的主编，这套丛书以约稿方式组织合成方法的权威综述。2023 年他还主持了第 56 届比尔根施托克会议。
• He has not slowed down. In 2026 two consecutive papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reported the total synthesis of Benthol A and the structure revision that came out of it.他的节奏并未放慢。2026 年两篇接连发表于《Journal of the American Chemical Society》的论文报告了 Benthol A 的全合成，以及由此得出的结构修正。^[1]

Research

• The department's stated programme is to make organometallic reagents and catalysts, establish how they act, and then apply them to targets of biological significance, with carbon-carbon bond formation as the thread tying the three parts together.该部门公开的研究纲领是：先做出金属有机试剂与催化剂，再查明它们如何起作用，然后用于有生物意义的复杂目标。碳碳成键是把这三步串起来的主线。
• His independent career began with ring-closing olefin metathesis around 1991, when the molybdenum and ruthenium alkylidene catalysts of Richard Schrock and Robert Grubbs were new and had barely been tried on medium-sized and macrocyclic rings.他的独立研究生涯始于 1991 年前后的闭环烯烃复分解。当时 Richard Schrock 与 Robert Grubbs 的钼、钌亚烷基催化剂刚问世，几乎没人在中等环与大环上试用过。
• A 1996 paper with Klaus Langemann argued that ring-closing metathesis closes macrocycles even when the chain has no conformational preference for the ring, and it laid out how to place the reaction in a retrosynthetic plan.1996 年他与 Klaus Langemann 合作发表论文，论证闭环复分解即使在链段对成环没有构象偏好时也能关上大环，并给出把该反应用于逆合成设计的规则。^[2]
• Syntheses of dactylol and lasiodiplodin from the same years were the demonstrations, each replacing several stoichiometric steps at the end of a sequence with one catalytic ring closure.同期完成的两个环状天然产物（dactylol 与 lasiodiplodin）合成就是例证。两者都用一次催化关环，替代了路线末端的好几步化学计量反应。
• Alkyne metathesis then became his signature reaction. In 1998 he and Günter Seidel reported the first ring-closing alkyne metathesis, which converts diynes into cycloalkynes and reaches ring sizes that olefin metathesis handles badly.炔烃复分解随后成为他的标志性反应。1998 年他与 Günter Seidel 报道了首例闭环炔烃复分解，把二炔变成环炔，能到达烯烃复分解难以处理的环尺寸。
• The reaction is driven by a large thermodynamic gain because the small alkyne by-product can be removed, and the triple bond left in the ring can afterwards be reduced to a cis or a trans alkene at will.该反应有很强的热力学驱动力，因为副产的小分子炔可以被移走。环上留下的三键事后还能按需还原成顺式或反式烯烃。
• Making that reliable took two decades of catalyst work, from ill-defined and moisture-sensitive tungsten and molybdenum species to molybdenum alkylidyne complexes that can be weighed in air, published in 2023 as From the Glovebox to the Benchtop.要让这条路线可靠，花了二十年做催化剂：从组成不清、怕水的钨与钼物种，做到可以在空气中称量的钼亚烷基配合物，成果于 2023 年以「从手套箱到实验台」为题发表。
• His 2021 review in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, The Ascent of Alkyne Metathesis to Strategy-Level Status, described how a reaction once treated as a specialty tool became the axis around which an entire synthesis is planned.他 2021 年发表于《Journal of the American Chemical Society》的综述《The Ascent of Alkyne Metathesis to Strategy-Level Status》讲述了这一反应如何从专门工具变成整条合成路线的设计轴心。^[3]
• The epothilone work of 2001, a total synthesis of epothilones A and C built on alkyne metathesis, was the early proof that the method could carry a medicinally important target.2001 年的埃博霉素工作以炔烃复分解为基础完成埃博霉素 A 与 C 的全合成，是该方法能承担重要药物目标的早期证明。^[4]
• A second line of work grew around pi-acid catalysis, in which platinum(II) and gold(I) activate alkynes and allenes toward nucleophilic attack rather than acting as redox catalysts.第二条主线围绕 π 酸催化展开。铂（II）与金（I）在这里不充当氧化还原催化剂，而是把炔与联烯活化到易受亲核进攻的状态。
• A 2007 review with Alun Davies, Catalytic Carbophilic Activation, supplied the field's mechanistic vocabulary and is still the usual first citation in papers on gold and platinum catalysis.2007 年他与 Alun Davies 合写的综述《Catalytic Carbophilic Activation》为这一领域提供了机理语汇，至今仍是金、铂催化论文最常引用的第一篇文献。^[5]
• Enyne cycloisomerization raised the question of whether gold carbenoids are genuine intermediates, and his group settled it structurally, ending with the 2014 characterization of a reactive gold carbenoid.烯炔环异构化引出一个问题：金卡宾体是否真是反应中间体。他的团队用结构证据给出答案，最终在 2014 年表征了一个活泼的金卡宾体。
• Iron catalysis was the third pillar. In 2002 he showed that simple iron salts catalyze cross-coupling of alkyl Grignard reagents with aryl chlorides, tosylates and triflates, a transformation that had belonged to palladium.铁催化是第三根支柱。2002 年他证明简单铁盐就能催化烷基格氏试剂与芳基氯、对甲苯磺酸酯和三氟甲磺酸酯的交叉偶联，而这类转化此前一直属于钯的领地。^[6]
• The 2008 account The Promise and Challenge of Iron-Catalyzed Cross Coupling and a deliberately sceptical 2016 assessment in ACS Central Science marked out what the base metal can and cannot do.2008 年的综述《The Promise and Challenge of Iron-Catalyzed Cross Coupling》与 2016 年发表于 ACS Central Science 的一篇带有怀疑色彩的评估，划清了这种廉价金属能与不能的边界。
• Chromium came earlier. In 1996 he made the Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi reaction catalytic in chromium by adding a sacrificial reductant, which removed the need for stoichiometric amounts of a toxic metal.铬的工作更早。1996 年他借助牺牲性还原剂让 Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi 反应只需催化量的铬，从而摆脱了对有毒金属的化学计量消耗。^[7]
• Low-valent titanium, the reagent behind McMurry couplings and related reductive cyclizations, was reviewed with Borislav Bogdanović in 1996 and stayed in his toolbox for building carbocycles.低价钛是 McMurry 偶联及相关还原环化的基础试剂。他 1996 年与 Borislav Bogdanović 合写综述，此后一直把它留在构建碳环的工具箱里。^[8]
• Metal carbenes run through all of this, and in 2016 his group isolated donor-acceptor and donor-donor rhodium carbenes and determined their structures by X-ray diffraction, species that had previously only been inferred.金属卡宾贯穿上述工作。2016 年他的团队分离出给体-受体型与给体-给体型铑卡宾，并用 X 射线衍射定出结构。此前这些物种只能靠推断。^[9]
• That structural knowledge led in 2025 to dirhodium paddlewheel catalysts that are heterochiral at the two metal centers, offered as a new kind of asymmetric catalyst.这些结构认识在 2025 年催生了两个金属中心互为异手性的双铑桨轮催化剂，被提出作为一类新的不对称催化剂。
• Ruthenium produced one of his more surprising results. Simple ruthenium catalysts reduce internal alkynes to trans alkenes, overturning the century-old assumption that catalytic hydrogenation always delivers both hydrogen atoms to the same face.钌带来了一项更出人意料的结果。简单钌催化剂能把内炔还原为反式烯烃，推翻了催化氢化总是把两个氢加在同一面的百年假设。
• The same intermediates give geminal hydrogenation, with both hydrogens on one carbon, and a 2018 study tied the two behaviours to half-sandwich ruthenium carbene complexes.同样的中间体还能导致孪位氢化，即两个氢落在同一个碳上。2018 年的一项研究把这两种行为都归到半夹心钌卡宾配合物上。^[10]
• A 2009 paper in Nature Chemistry on coordination chemistry at carbon described carbodicarbenes, in which a carbon(0) center binds two ligands and behaves like a metal, an idea grown from the same carbene work.2009 年发表于 Nature Chemistry、题为「Coordination chemistry at carbon」的论文描述了碳二卡宾：一个碳（0）中心连接两个配体，行为像金属。这一想法正是从卡宾化学中生长出来的。^[11]
• Arene complexes run through the early work, from the metal-graphite chemistry of his habilitation to planar-chiral arene-tethered ruthenium complexes that were resolved and used to catalyze Diels-Alder reactions.芳烃配合物贯穿他的早期工作，从任教资格论文里的金属石墨化学，到可拆分、能催化 Diels-Alder 反应的平面手性芳烃系连钌配合物。
• Total synthesis supplies the test cases, and the list is long: roseophilin in 1998, the iejimalides, the amphidinolides T4, X and F, the spirastrellolides A and F, leiodermatolide, mandelalide A, scabrolide A, njaoamine C and finally Benthol A.全合成提供了检验场，清单很长：1998 年的 Roseophilin，此后是一串复杂大环天然产物（iejimalide、amphidinolide、spirastrellolide、leiodermatolide、mandelalide、scabrolide、njaoamine）的各个成员，直到 2026 年的 Benthol A 与随之而来的结构修正。^[12]
• The leiodermatolide synthesis of 2012 was deliberately divergent, making several analogues of the antimitotic macrolide from a common late intermediate so that biological testing could follow the chemistry.2012 年的合成（leiodermatolide）刻意做成发散式：从一个共同的后期中间体得到这个抗有丝分裂大环内酯的多个类似物，好让生物学测试紧跟化学合成。^[13]
• Mandelalide A is a case where synthesis corrected the literature: the 2014 route to the proposed structure gave a compound that did not match the natural product, and the 2015 revision established the true stereochemistry.Mandelalide A 则是合成修正文献的例子：2014 年按提议结构做出的产物与天然物不符，2015 年的修正确定了真实的立体化学。
• Amphidinolide F and the related campaigns led him to promote diverted total synthesis, in which analogues are made on purpose rather than as accidents of a route.Amphidinolide F 及相关工作让他提出「转向全合成」的思路：类似物是有意做出来的，而不是路线附带产生的副产物。
• The spirastrellolide work reached spirastrellolide A methyl ester in 2013 after a sequence of papers that solved the northern and southern halves separately before joining them.Spirastrellolide 系列工作先分批解决南北两半，再行拼接，最终于 2013 年完成其 A 型甲酯的全合成。^[14]
• According to OpenAlex his author record holds about 1,165 works with more than 60,000 citations and an h-index of 126, figures that place him among the most cited organic chemists of his generation.据 OpenAlex，其作者记录收录约 1,165 篇著作，被引超过 6 万次，h 指数 126。这组数字使他位居同代有机化学家引用量前列。

Awards

• His first recognitions were German and local: a lecturer's scholarship from the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie in 1994 and the Ruhr Prize for Arts and Sciences of the city of Mülheim in 1998.他最早的荣誉来自德国与地方：1994 年化学工业基金会的讲师奖学金，以及 1998 年米尔海姆市的鲁尔科学艺术奖。
• The 1999 Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, one of the country's most prestigious research awards, arrived a year after his appointment as director.1999 年，德国研究联合会（DFG）的莱布尼茨奖落到他头上。这是德国最重要的研究奖项之一，距他出任所长仅一年。
• The early 2000s brought the Thieme-IUPAC Prize and the AstraZeneca Award in Organic Chemistry in 2000, the Victor Grignard-Georg Wittig Prize of the Société Française de Chimie in 2001, and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society in 2002.21 世纪初接连而来：2000 年的 Thieme-IUPAC 奖与阿斯利康有机化学奖，2001 年法国化学会的 Victor Grignard-Georg Wittig 奖，2002 年美国化学会的 Arthur C. Cope 学者奖。
• In 2004 the Royal Society of Chemistry awarded him its Centenary Prize, and in the same year he held a Tetrahedron Chair.2004 年英国皇家化学会授予他百年奖，同年他还获得 Tetrahedron 讲席。
• Japan followed in 2005, when he became the first recipient of the Mukaiyama Award of the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, and the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry gave him its Junior Award in the same year.2005 年日本方面跟进：他成为日本合成有机化学学会首个向山奖得主，同年国际杂环化学会又授予他青年奖。
• 2006 brought two of the most prestigious German prizes in the same year, the Otto Bayer Prize and the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the latter for work at the intersection of chemistry and biology.2006 年他一年之内拿下两项德国重要奖项：奥托·拜耳奖与海因里希·维兰德奖，后者表彰化学与生物学交叉领域的工作。
• The Janssen Pharmaceutica Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis came in 2008, and ETH Zurich gave him the Prelog Medal in 2011.2008 年他获杨森制药有机合成创造力奖，2011 年苏黎世联邦理工学院授予他普雷洛格奖章。
• In 2013 he received the Karl Ziegler Prize of the German Chemical Society and the Kitasato Medal in Tokyo, and France added the Gay-Lussac-Humboldt Prize, dated 2013 in the French announcement and 2014 in the institute's own list.2013 年他获得德国化学会的卡尔·齐格勒奖与东京的北里奖章，法国方面又授予他盖-吕萨克-洪堡奖。该奖在法方公告中记为 2013 年，在研究所自己的清单上记作 2014 年。
• 2014 brought the Hans Herloff Inhoffen Medal in Braunschweig, 2015 the Adolf Windaus Medal in Göttingen, and 2016 the Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods from the American Chemical Society.2014 年他在布伦瑞克获汉斯·赫尔洛夫·因霍芬奖章，2015 年在哥廷根获阿道夫·温道斯奖章，2016 年获美国化学会的赫伯特·C. 布朗合成方法创新研究奖。
• Later honours include the Prix Mondial Nessim Habif in Geneva in 2019 and the Werner Heisenberg Medal of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2020.此后的荣誉包括 2019 年日内瓦的内西姆·哈比夫世界奖，以及 2020 年亚历山大·冯·洪堡基金会的维尔纳·海森堡奖章。
• In 2024 he received the Nagoya Gold Medal and the EuChemS Division of Organic Chemistry Award, the latter for 2023 and presented at a conference in Dublin.2024 年他获得名古屋金奖与欧洲化学会联合会有机化学分会奖。后者对应 2023 年度，在都柏林的一次会议上颁发。
• He was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2002, to the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2004, and as a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2004.他 2002 年当选德国国家科学院（利奥波第那）院士，2004 年当选北莱茵-威斯特法伦科学与艺术学院院士，同年成为奥地利科学院通讯院士。

Personal life

• His editorial work has been unusually heavy for a sitting director: he chaired the editorial board of Angewandte Chemie from 2014 to 2018 and was scientific editor of Chemical Communications from 2001 to 2007.对一位在任所长来说，他的编辑工作相当繁重：2014 至 2018 年任《Angewandte Chemie》编委会主席，2001 至 2007 年任《Chemical Communications》科学编辑。
• He also served on the board of editors of Organic Syntheses from 2001 to 2006, on the board of governors of the German Chemical Society from 2004 to 2011, and on the scientific advisory board of ICIQ in Tarragona from 2012 to 2022.他还在 2001 至 2006 年任《Organic Syntheses》编委，2004 至 2011 年任德国化学会理事会成员，2012 至 2022 年任塔拉戈纳加泰罗尼亚化学研究所（ICIQ）科学顾问。
• Lecture tours have taken him well beyond Europe, including a 2025 visit to China for the SIOC Lectureship in Shanghai and the Nanqiang Lecture in Xiamen, and the Negishi Lectureship at Purdue the same year.讲学足迹远超欧洲：2025 年他访问中国，在上海有机化学研究所作 SIOC 讲座、在厦门大学作南强讲座，同年还在普渡大学作根岸讲座。
• The institute's own pages list more than 200 plenary and invited lectures since 1997, a record that says something about how much of his time goes into arguing for methods before they are widely accepted.研究所的页面列出 1997 年以来两百多场大会报告与邀请报告。这一记录多少说明，他有相当多时间用在方法尚未被普遍接受之前的宣讲上。