Credit:
Courtesy of Stephen L. Buchwald
The Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society has awarded Stephen L. Buchwald the 2026 Willard Gibbs Award. The award recognizes those whose pioneering work has opened new fields of research. Buchwald, Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is being recognized for his fundamental advances in metal-catalyzed coupling reactions. He is known for developing the Buchwald-Hartwig coupling reaction, and his discoveries have led to applications in drug discovery, agrochemicals, materials science, and more.
Buchwald has received many other awards recognizing his pioneering work, such as the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry, the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, the ACS Northeastern Section Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest, the Arthur C. Cope Award, the ACS New York Local Section William H. Nichols Medal, and the ACS Delaware Section Carothers Award.
The Chicago Section will host an award ceremony on May 15, where Buchwald will deliver an award lecture titled “Pd-Catalyzed Carbon-Nitrogen Coupling Reactions: How Did We Get Here and Why Do We Care?” on his cross-coupling methodology for carbon-nitrogen bonds. More information about the ceremony can be found on the ACS local section’s website.
2026 American Chemical Society
