| Citation | Distinguished for his many innovative contributions to new synthetic methods, he is widely regarded as one of the leading organic chemists in the field. By far his major contribution has been to research on the application of organosilicon compounds in synthesis. He was the first to show that vinylsilanes undergo regiospecific electrophilic substitution, subsequently used very widely by others. Several important related reactions involving silyl enol ethers and dienol silyl ethers showed the power a silyl group has to control the outcome of carbocationic reactions. Highly important also has been his development of the phenyldimethylsilyl cuprate reagent which allows the flexible introduction of silyl groups into many types of molecule. More recently, he has added highly effective methods for stereocontrol of reactions using silicon to the regio-control developed earlier. The combination of these novel methods allowed synthesis of loganin, dihydronepetalactone, thienamycin, tetrahydrolipstatin and a carbacyclin all with a high degree of regio- and stereo-control. All this work has brought him world-wide aclaim [sic] and he is certainly one of the two or the world leaders in the organo-silicon field. In addition, his brilliant books on frontier orbitals and spectroscopy have had a major influence by carrying these topics to a broad audience of organic chemists throughout the world; these books have been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Indian and other languages. |