The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry welcomes Professor Weston Borden of University of North Texas for a special seminar in honor of Professor Matthew Platz who was a valued part of the department and served as department chair from 1994-1999.
Title: Matt and Me
Matt Platz has had an outstanding career in research (over 300 publications, ACS Cope Scholar, winner of the ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical-Organic Chemistry, and many other awards) and in administration (OSU Chemistry Department Chair, Dean, Vice-Provost, Director of the Division of Chemistry at NSF, and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo). These accomplishments of Matt’s will not be the subject of this lecture. Instead, this lecture will focus on a collaboration, initiated by Matt, between his research group and mine, which accidentally led to the understanding of the many differences between phenylcarbene and the superficially similar phenylnitrene. The success of this collaboration eventually led Matt to abandon his research on the transient spectroscopy of arylnitrenes, in order to move onto more challenging problems in the chemistry and spectroscopy of reactive intermediates in organic chemistry.
