Eric Jacobsen

About

Eric Jacobsen is the Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, having joined the institution as a full professor in 1993. He was named the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry in 2001 and served as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology from 2010 through 2015. His research group, consisting of 20-25 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, focuses on discovering useful catalytic reactions and applying advanced mechanistic and computational techniques to analyze these reactions. Several catalysts developed in his labs, including metal-salen complexes for asymmetric epoxidation, conjugate additions, and hydrolytic kinetic resolution of epoxides; chromium-Schiff base complexes for enantioselective pericyclic reactions; and organic hydrogen bond-donor catalysts for activation of electrophiles, have found widespread application in industry and academia. His mechanistic analyses have helped uncover general principles for catalyst design, such as electronic tuning of selectivity, cooperative homo- and hetero-bimetallic catalysis, hydrogen-bond donor asymmetric catalysis, and anion binding catalysis. Prior to Harvard, he served on the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1988 to 1993. He earned his B.S. degree at NYU, his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral studies at MIT.

Research topics

• Organic chemistry
• Chemistry
• Combinatorial chemistry
• Medicinal chemistry
• Cardiology
• Endocrinology
• Internal medicine
• Stereochemistry
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Sodium-Glucose Co-Transporter-2 Inhibitors and Cardiac Outcomes Among Patients Treated With Anthracyclines

  JACC Heart Failure · 2022 · 151 citations

  DOI

• Stereospecific Furanosylations Catalyzed by Bis-thiourea Hydrogen-Bond Donors

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2020 · 116 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  substitution pattern with a range of alcohol acceptors. A variety of stereochemically distinct, benzyl-protected glycosyl donors were engaged successfully as substrates. Mechanistic studies support a stereospecific mechanism in which rate-determining substitution occurs from a catalyst-donor resting-state complex.

  DOI

• Enantioselective catalytic 1,2-boronate rearrangements

  Science · 2021 · 108 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  A strategy that facilitates the construction of a wide variety of trisubstituted stereocenters through a catalytically accessed common chiral intermediate could prove highly enabling for the field of synthetic chemistry. We report the discovery of enantioselective, catalytic 1,2-boronate rearrangements for the synthesis of α-chloro pinacol boronic esters from readily available boronic esters and dichloromethane. The chiral building blocks produced in these reactions can undergo two sequential st…

  DOI

• Catalysis of an SN2 pathway by geometric preorganization

  Nature · 2024-07-18 · 45 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enantioselective Potassium-Catalyzed Wittig Olefinations

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024-03-07 · 45 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  We report asymmetric potassium-isothiourea-boronate-catalyzed Wittig olefinations of 4-substituted cyclohexanones with non-stabilized phosphorus ylides to afford highly enantioenriched axially chiral alkenes. The optimal catalyst features an unusual macrocyclic amide-potassium-boronate chelate. Kinetic and spectroscopic analyses are consistent with a Lewis acid mechanism for the catalytic olefination that results in the formation of the oxaphosphetane adduct under cryogenic conditions. Thermal f…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Broadly Applicable, Small Molecule Catalysts for Stereoselective and Site-Selective Glycosylation Reactions

  NIH · $1.4M · 2019–2023

• Small-Molecule Catalysts for the Stereoselective Synthesis of Oligosaccharides

  NIH · $1.2M · 2015–2018

• NIH Grant P50GM069721

  NIH · $32.1M · 2014

Frequent coauthors

• Tehshik P. Yoon

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  52 shared

• Christopher D. Vanderwal

  University of California, Irvine

  49 shared

• C. Rose Kennedy

  University of Rochester

  42 shared

• Noah Z. Burns

  Stanford University

  42 shared

• Steven M. Banik

  38 shared

• David D. Ford

  34 shared

• Dan Lehnherr

  Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA (United States)

  32 shared

• Scott E. Schaus

  Boston University

  26 shared

Labs

• Jacobsen GroupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Chemistry

  Harvard University

  2005

• B.S., Chemistry

  University of California, Berkeley

  2000

Awards & honors

• Sheldon Emory Professor of Organic Chemistry (2001)

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Xiaowei Zhuangh-158
• Joonho Leeh-134
• Joanna Aizenbergh-104