Winner of the Israel Prize in the field of chemistry and physics research - Prof. David Milstein from the Weizmann Institute

The award committee was chaired by the Nobel laureate, Prof. Dan Shechtman

Below is the message of the Israel Prize Committee

The Minister of Education, Gideon Sa'ar, adopted the recommendation of the Israel Prize Committee headed by Nobel laureate, Prof. Dan Shechtman, to award the Israel Prize in the field of chemistry and physics research XNUMX, to Prof. David Milstein. The Minister of Education congratulated Prof. Micheltain on winning the award.

In the reasons of the committee, its members stated: "The Israel Prize in the field of chemistry research and physics research for the year XNUMX was awarded to Prof. David Milstein. Prof. David Milstein broke new ways to speed up the creation of compounds, developed new approaches to activate chemically inert compounds using materials containing metals and brought about a thorough understanding of connections between organic molecules and metal ions. His work led to innovative and environmentally friendly processes. In addition, he developed a new approach to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen using light, which is one of the most important scientific goals today. In addition, he developed an efficient method for producing methanolic fuel from carbon dioxide."

The prize committee: Chairman Prof. Dan Shechtman, and next to him the members - Prof. Raphael Meshulam, Prof. Belha Fisher and Prof. Yigal Ptolemy.

David Milstein was born in 1947 in Germany and immigrated to Israel in 1949. He is married to Adi and the father of a daughter, Nufit, and sons, Oren and Abi.

David studied chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of the academic reserve, and in the Six Day War he was recruited and participated in the occupation of the Temple Mount.

After completing his bachelor's and master's degree with honors, he served in the IDF in a classified unit and then engaged in research at the nuclear research facility in Dimona and at the same time completed his doctoral thesis in chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Blum from the Hebrew University. After completing his doctoral studies in 1976, David embarked on postdoctoral research in the USA at the Universities of Iowa and Colorado where he worked with Prof. Stilley. In this research, he invented the "Steele reaction" which is one of the best modern synthetic methods today for creating carbon-carbon bonds, books have been written about it and it is used in the pharmaceutical industry and in many laboratories. In 1979, he joined the central research department of the DuPont company in the USA, which is one of the largest chemical companies in the world and where the scientific foundations of the field of organometallic chemistry were also developed. In 1982, he was appointed head of a group of scientists who were engaged in the study of homogeneous catalysis using metal complexes, clarified their mechanism of action and developed processes of industrial importance. At the end of 1986 David returned to Israel with his family and was appointed an associate professor in the organic chemistry department of the Weizmann Institute of Science and in 1993 he was promoted to full professor and was elected to hold the chair of Israel Metz.

In 1996 he was appointed head of the organic chemistry department and served in this position for three terms (9 years). In 2000 he founded the Kimmel Center for Molecular Design at the Weizmann Institute and has served as its director ever since. This center combines various research fields for the open purpose of innovative methods for the preparation, characterization and application of functional molecular systems, and a significant number of scientific groups participate in it.

Prof. Milstein discovered innovative methods for the activation of chemical bonds using metals, developed important catalytic processes and led to an understanding of key processes in the interaction between organic molecules and metals. His series of works on activating carbon-carbon bonds using metal complexes is considered a historical landmark (milestone) in organometallic chemistry (Organometallics textbook) (Elschenbroich, Wiley, 2006).

A few years ago he developed an innovative principle in catalysis, according to which the ligand bound to the metal center in the catalyst actively participates (by reversible daromatization), together with the metal atom, in breaking and forming bonds of the substrate. This led to the discovery of innovative catalytic processes that are environmentally friendly (they do not produce any waste), such as obtaining amides directly from the reaction of salts and amines while emitting hydrogen gas (Science, 2007, 790, 317). This new general reaction received a lot of publicity in the scientific community and was noted by Science among The most important scientific discoveries for 2007. Other important "green" reactions developed by Prof. Milstein based on the principle of metal-ligand sharing include: receiving esters directly from solvents while emitting hydrogen gas, hydrogenation of esters to solvents

Under mild conditions, obtaining acetals (protected aldehydes) and hydrogen directly from solvents, and selective amination of solvents with ammonia to obtain primary amines. This year Prof. Milstein published a very important finding - a completely new approach to splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using light, which contains a thermal stage in which hydrogen is released and a photochemical stage in which oxygen is emitted, using an innovative ruthenium complex developed in his laboratory, and without the need for consumables (74 Science 2009, 324, ) . In addition, this discovery shows a new way of forming a bond between oxygen atoms using light. This work is considered a scientific breakthrough in the field of energy and has received a lot of publicity.

Prof. Milstein's work has received wide international recognition and many awards, including the Kolthoff Award from the Technion in 2002, the Israel Chemical Society Award in 2006, the National Award in Organometallic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2007 and in 2006 he was elected to the German National Academy to the sciences. In 2007, a symposium was held in his honor as part of the ACS convention in Chicago, and when he reached the age of 60, a special symposium was held in his honor at the Weizmann Institute: "Metals as Mill-Stones for Refining Chemistry" which was attended by well-known scientists from various countries. He has been invited to give many honorary lectures at conferences and universities around the world (for example, this year, the NOVARTIS lecture at HARVARD and the LITTLE AD lectures at MIT). He was a visiting professor at well-known universities there and served on many national and international committees such as a special committee of the US Department of Energy in 2008 to review the scientific level of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California. He is a member of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science of the University of Berkeley and he is one of the editorial boards of international scientific journals and a senior consultant to one of the largest chemical corporations in the world. He published up to about 230 articles in first-class journals that received many citations [H factor 52]. These days, Prof. Milstein received notification of his winning a highly prestigious research grant from the European community ADVANCED GRANT ERC to which few winners in Europe (2 million euros).

Prof. Milstein raised a generation of students, many of whom are faculty members at leading academic institutions in Israel and around the world (in Israel: Prof. Arkady Vigluk, Prof. Moshe Fortnoy, Dr. Michael Gozin (Tel'a University), Prof. Milko van der Boom, Dr. Boris Rivcinski (Weizmann Institute), Dr. Mark Gendelman (Technion)).

This year Prof. Milstein is serving as the Israeli representative on the international committee chosen by the MLA to review chemistry studies in higher education institutions.