Professor Robert J. Gilliard, Jr. is the winner of the prestigious 2021 Organometallics Distinguished Author Award Lectureship. Organometallics, the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, and the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry sponsor this annual award, which recognizes the author of an exceptional article published in Organometallics in the previous two calendar years. The award is given to the author of an article that emphasized the importance of organometallic chemistry and had a profound impact on organic and inorganic chemistry as a whole. The editorial board makes selections after receiving nominations from the Organometallics community and Robert was selected for three articles published in 2019 and 2020 on alkaline earth metal chemistry:

• N-Heterocyclic Carbene Mediated Ring Opening of Reduced Diazamagnesacycles Obi, Akachukwu D.; Freeman, Lucas A.; Dickie, Diane A.; Gilliard, Robert J. Organometallics 2020, 39, 4575-4583. DOI: 10.1021/acs.organomet.0c00620.

• Tris(carbene)-stabilization of Monomeric Magnesium Cations: A Neutral, Non-tethered Ligand Approach Obi, Akachukwu D.; Walley, Jacob E.; Dickie, Diane A.; Frey, Nathan A.; Wong, Yuen Onn; Webster, Charles E.; Gilliard, Robert J. Organometallics 2020, 39, 4329-4339. DOI: 10.1021/acs.organomet.0c00462

• Two Carbenes Versus One in Magnesium Chemistry: Synthesis of Terminal Dihalide, Dialkyl, and Grignard Reagents Wong, Yuen Onn; Freeman, Lucas A.; Agakidou, A. Danai; Dickie, Diane; Webster, Charles E.; Gilliard, Robert J. Organometallics 2019, 38, 688-696. DOI: 10.1021/acs.organomet.8b00866. 

As the winner of the 2021 Organometallics Distinguished Author Award, Robert will receive a $3,000 honorarium and travel and hotel accommodations to attend and present at two sessions in his honor at an upcoming ACS meeting – one with the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry and one with the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, details will be provided at a later date when they become available.