Prelog Lecture 2019

Professor Véronique Gouverneur was born in Geel, Belgium and studied chemistry at the Université Catholique de Louvain (LLN, Belgium), under the supervision of Professor L Ghosez. After completing her PhD studies in 1992, she moved to San Diego, California for Postdoctoral studies with Professor Richard Lerner at the Scripps Research Institute. In 1994, she was appointed Maître de Conférence at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France), where she worked with Dr Charles Mioskowski and was an Associate Member of the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires, directed by Professor Jean-Marie Lehn. In 1998, Professor Gouverneur joined the faculty of chemistry at the University of Oxford and was appointed Professor of Chemistry in 2008. Since the beginning of her time at Oxford, she has held a tutorial fellowship at Merton College Oxford where she teaches organic chemistry.

Professor Gouverneur’s research is characterized by sophisticated advances and insights on cutting edge synthetic methods. She has worked across multiple areas including cycloadditions, olefin metathesis, biocatalysis, and new catalytic reactions. Her work routinely offers insightful new directions, both in new endeavors and in established fields.

Early in her independent career, Prof. Gouverneur recognized the growing importance of fluorine containing molecules for pharmaceutical science and began developing new synthetic methods to access these challenging targets, often with exceptional control of enantio- and diastereoselectivity. This program evolved into one that not only addressed the stereoselective construction of C-F bonds, but also the challenge of incorporating and utilizing [18]-F as radiotracers for biological imaging. In this arena, she has been a leader in moving advances in organic methodology into technologies relevant for biological and medicinal PET imaging. Since 2010, Prof. Gouverneur is the Director Radiochemistry Laboratory SOMIL Oxford University

In addition to her research and teaching, Prof. Gouverneur has served in numerous leadership roles, both locally and internationally. Earlier this year, she served as the President of the SCS Conference on Stereochemistry, better known as the world-famous “Bürgenstock Conference”. From 2016–2018, she served as the chair of the EuChems Organic Division, and in 2018 she organized and chaired the 22nd International Symposium in Fluorine Chemistry.

Professor Gouverneur’s research and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards and honors, including the 2019 RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award, the 2016 Tetrahedron Chair, the 2016 RSC Tilden Prize, and the 2015 ACS Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry. She is an elected member of the European Academy of Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Through her exceptionally creative and ambitious work across multiple disciplines of synthetic organic chemistry, Prof. Gouveneur exemplifies the spirit of passion, curiosity, and rigor of the distinguished list of previous awardees. We are honored to recognize her outstanding contributions by awarding her the 2019 Prelog Medal of the Laboratorium für Organische Chemie at ETH Zürich.