Steven V. Ley

Steven Victor Ley is the BP Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of Trinity College. He was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2000-2002) and was made a CBE in January 2002.

His main research field is the total synthesis of biomolecules. His group has published extensively on this topic, and has completed the synthesis of more than 115 target compounds, with examples including indanamycin, routiennocin, avermectin B1a, okadaic acid, spongistatin, thapsigargin, epothilone A and rapamycin. His total synthesis of azadirachtin, completed in 2007, is widely regarded as one of the major landmarks in total synthesis. In the course of this work, he has also made substantial advances in many areas of organic chemistry, including the development of new catalysts, protecting groups and reagents. He is one of the inventors of TPAP, a widely employed oxidizing reagent. He has also pioneered the use of immobilized reagents and flow techniques in multi-step organic synthesis. This work now incorporates flow chemistry for multistep organic synthesis applications.

Steve Ley's work of over 660 papers has been recognised by about 40 major prizes and awards, the most recent of which are: •2008 High Throughput Drug Discovery Methodologies Award (The Royal Society of Chemistry) •2008 Prous Institute-Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery (European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry) •2008 Hans Heroff Inhoffen Medal, Helmholtz Zentrum für Infectionsforschung, Germany• 2007 SCI Innovation Award • 2007 Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (ACS) • 2006 The Nagoya Gold Medal (Banyu Life Science Foundation International, Japan) • 2006 Robert Robinson Award and Medal (Royal Society of Chemistry) • 2005 The Yamada-Koga Prize (Japan)

External links

* [http://leygroup.ch.cam.ac.uk/Vitae/svlvitae.htm Ley group]