Professor Kit Cummins, MIT

"Nonexistent Compounds"

About the Seminar

"The book Nonexistent Compounds by W. E. Dasent gives consideration to compounds "... whose structures do not offend the simpler rules of valence, but which nevertheless are characterized by a low degree of stability." One such compound mentioned in the book is the diatomic molecule P2.  The presentation will delineate synthetic access to sources of P2 that may be regarded (depending upon mechanism) as thermal molecular precursors to P2 or as P2 transfer agents.  Also to be described are our efforts to characterize volatilized species by molecular beam mass spectrometry and by spectroscopy.  New cycloaddition reactivity studies involving P2 will be described that bear upon the concept of aromaticity as it applies to the stabilization of planar inorganic ring systems.  Finally, related studies on thermally activated molecular precursors to HCP, cis-diazene, and HPO will be discussed with the goal of illustrating relationships and synergies between the areas of synthetic chemistry, reactive intermediates, and interstellar molecules."

About the Speaker

"Christopher “Kit” Colin Cummins benefited from formative undergraduate research experiences carried out sequentially in the laboratories of Professors Susan E. Kegley, James P. Collman, and Peter T. Wolczanski, respectively of Middlebury College, Stanford University and Cornell University. He graduated from the latter institution with an A.B. degree in 1989. Following this he undertook inorganic chemistry graduate studies under the direction of Professor Richard R. Schrock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1993 with a thesis entitled “Synthetic Investigations Featuring Amidometallic Complexes”. Also in 1993 Kit joined the chemistry faculty at MIT as an Assistant Professor, and in 1996 he was promoted to his current rank of Professor.

"Kit's work has been recognized with Harvard University's E. Bright Wilson Prize, the Phi Lambda Upsilon National Fresenius Award, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, the TR100 Award, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, the Dannie-Heineman Preis of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, the ACS F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry, and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences. Kit was also selected as the inaugural winner of the Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award, and as as recipient of the RSC Ludwig Mond Award. Kit has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen."