Prof. Ei-ichi Negishi (1935-2021) is known to every organic and organometallic chemist as one of the pioneers of cross-coupling chemistry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010. In his honor, the Negishi Lecture was established in the year 2021 at his home institution, the Purdue University in West Lafayette.

This lectureship was held this year by Alois Fürstner, Director of the Department of Organometallic Chemistry. In his seminar presentation entitled “On the Pluripotent Triple Bond,” he presented the work of his team on unconventional functionalization reactions of alkynes and their application in natural product chemistry.

Alois Fürstner was only the fourth scientist to receive this special lectureship.