Board Member

Robert G. Bergman completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry at Carleton College in l963 and received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in l966 under the direction of Jerome A. Berson. Bergman spent l966-67 as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization Fellow in Ronald Breslow's laboratories at Columbia, and following that began his independent career at the California Institute of Technology. He accepted an appointment as professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in July l977, and moved his research group to Berkeley about a year later. In 2002 he was appointed Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor. He has received a number of national awards and has co-authored more than 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Bergman was trained as an organic chemist and spent the first part of his independent career studying reaction mechanisms that involve unusually reactive molecules, such as 1,3-diradicals and vinyl cations. In 1972 he discovered a transformation of ene-diynes that was later identified as a crucial DNA-cleaving reaction in several antibiotics that bind to nucleic acids. In the mid-l970's Bergman’s research broadened to include organometallic chemistry, which led to contributions to the development and study of the reaction mechanisms of migratory insertion and oxidative addition reactions, the chemistry of new dinuclear complexes, and the investigation of organometallic compounds having metal-oxygen and -nitrogen bonds. He is probably best known for his discovery of the first soluble organometallic complexes that undergo intermolecular insertion of transition metals into the carbon-hydrogen bonds of alkanes. Most recently he has been involved in collaborative studies directed at applications of catalytic C-H activation reactions in organic synthesis, reactions catalyzed by supramolecular systems, and methods for the conversion of polyhydroxy compounds into materials currently derived from petroleum.

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