Researchers in organic synthesis, organometallic, and medicinal chemistry

Ross A. Widenhoefer

Ross A. Widenhoefer is an American organic chemist and Professor of Chemistry at Duke University since 1997, known for gold(I) and platinum-catalyzed hydroamination of alkenes and allenes.

Rowland Pettit

Rowland Pettit (1927–1981) was an Australian-born organometallic chemist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, best known for the first synthesis of the tropylium ion.

Rubén Martín

Rubén Martín Romo, born 1976 in Barcelona, is a Spanish organic chemist and ICREA professor at ICIQ in Tarragona known for nickel-catalyzed activation of inert bonds and carbon dioxide use.

Rudolf Criegee (1902–1975) was a German organic chemist, professor and institute director at Karlsruhe, known for the Criegee rearrangement and the Criegee intermediate he proposed in 1949 to explain ozonolysis.

Rudolf Wiechert

Rudolf Wiechert (1928–2013) was a German industrial organic chemist who led steroid chemistry research at Schering AG in Berlin, co-names the Hajos-Parrish-Eder-Wiechert reaction, and developed steroidal drugs including drospirenone.

Ruth M. Gschwind

Ruth M. Gschwind is a German organic chemist and professor of organic chemistry at the University of Regensburg since 2005, known for NMR studies of asymmetric catalysis.

Ryan A. Shenvi

Ryan A. Shenvi is an American organic chemist and professor at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, known for metal hydride atom transfer chemistry and terpene synthesis.

Ryan Gilmour

Ryan Gilmour (born 1980) is a British organic chemist who holds the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Münster, known for selective fluorination catalysis and chiral Al–salen photocatalysis.

Rylan J. Lundgren

Rylan J. Lundgren is a Canadian organic chemist and professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, known for reversible decarboxylation of organic acids and carbon isotope exchange.

Ryo Shintani

Ryo Shintani (新谷亮) is a Japanese organic chemist, professor at Osaka University's Graduate School of Engineering Science since 2017, known for the rhodium-catalyzed stitching reaction and stitching polymerization.

Ryoji Noyori

Ryoji Noyori (野依良治), born 1938 in Kobe, is a Japanese organic chemist who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for asymmetric hydrogenation and later served as President of RIKEN.

Samuel J. Danishefsky

Samuel J. Danishefsky (born 1936) is an American organic chemist at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Columbia, known for the Danishefsky diene, taxol synthesis, and anticancer vaccines.

Samuel M. McElvain

Samuel M. McElvain (1897–1973) was an American organic chemist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, known for discovering the ketene acetals and for the local anesthetics Metycaine and Surfacaine.

Samuel Smiles

Samuel Smiles (1877–1953) was a British chemist, Daniell Professor at King's College London, and eponym of the Smiles rearrangement, an intramolecular aromatic migration in organic sulfur chemistry.

Sensuke Ogoshi

Sensuke Ogoshi (生越専介) is a Japanese organometallic chemist and professor emeritus of Osaka University, known for nickel catalysis, NHC ligand design, and carbon–fluorine bond activation.

Seth B. Herzon

Seth B. Herzon is an American synthetic organic chemist and Yale professor known for short total syntheses of biologically active alkaloids and antibiotics, and for establishing how lomaiviticin A and colibactin damage DNA.

Shao Q. Yao

Shao Q. Yao, also known as Shao Qin Yao, is a chemical biologist and medicinal chemist at the National University of Singapore, known for activity-based probes and catalomics.

Shaozhong Ge

Shaozhong Ge (葛少中) is an organic and organometallic chemist and associate professor at the National University of Singapore, trained with John Hartwig, known for ligand-controlled cobalt-catalyzed hydroboration.

Shigeki Matsunaga

Shigeki Matsunaga (松永茂樹) is a Japanese organic chemist and professor at Kyoto University since 2023, known for the 2013 first report of Cp*Co(III)-catalyzed C–H activation.

Shigeru Yamago

Shigeru Yamago (山子茂) is a Japanese organic chemist and professor at Kyoto University's Institute for Chemical Research, known for cycloparaphenylene synthesis and organotellurium-mediated living radical polymerization.

Shoubhik Das

Shoubhik Das is a German-based chemist who has headed Organic Chemistry I at the University of Bayreuth since August 2023, known for photocatalytic CO2 activation research.

Shu Kobayashi

Shu Kobayashi (小林修) is a Japanese synthetic organic chemist at the University of Tokyo, known for water-compatible Lewis acid catalysts and continuous-flow synthesis of pharmaceuticals.

Shunsuke Chiba

Shunsuke Chiba (千葉俊介, born 1978) is a Japanese organic chemist and professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, known for radical chemistry and photoredox catalysis.

Siegfried Blechert

Siegfried Blechert (born 1946) is a German organic chemist known for ruthenium catalysts for olefin metathesis; he taught at Bonn and TU Berlin and joined the Leopoldina in 2006.

Siegfried R. Waldvogel

Siegfried R. Waldvogel, born in 1969, is a German organic chemist known for electro-organic synthesis, a professor at Mainz since 2010 and a Max Planck Institute director since 2023.

Sigmund Fraenkel

Sigmund Fraenkel, also written Siegmund Fränkel, was an Austrian physician, chemist, and pharmacologist who taught medical chemistry at Vienna and wrote Die Arzneimittel-Synthese, first published in 1901.

Oct 22, 2026

Sila-substitution

Sila-substitution, also called the silicon switch, is a medicinal chemistry method that replaces carbon atoms in drug candidates with silicon to alter activity and metabolism.

Sir Robert Robinson

Sir Robert Robinson was a British organic chemist who won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on plant products, especially the alkaloids.

Song Lin

Song Lin is a Chinese-born organic chemist who works on organic electrochemistry, using electric current to synthesize molecules; a Cornell professor, he joins Stanford in 2026 and won the 2026 Thieme–IUPAC Prize.