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Pr. Christophe Copéret was trained in chemistry and chemical engineering at CPE Lyon, France, and carried out a PhD in chemistry with Pr. E.i. Negishi (Purdue University), where he investigated the synthesis of complex molecules via Pd-catalyzed carbonylation reactions. After a postdoctoral stay with Pr. K.B. Sharpless (Scripps), he was offered a research position at CNRS in 1998 and was promoted CNRS Research Director in 2008. Since 2010, he is Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich. His scientific interest lies at the frontiers of molecular, material and surface chemistry as well as NMR spectroscopy with the aims to design molecularly-defined solid catalysts through detailed mechanistic studies and structure-activity relationships. He is the President of the Platform Chemistry of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNat), a member of boards (Swiss Chemical Society and EuChemS) and advisory boards of numerous journals (Catal. Lett., Catal. Sci. & Eng., Chem. Sci., Helvetica, Topics Catal...), and Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Chemical shift has been successfully used since the beginning of NMR to identify the signature of molecules (and materials) making NMR an invaluable tool of characterizations. Because of its power to elucidate molecular structure, NMR interpretation is taught at early stage, often in laboratory courses, even before one understand the fundamentals of spectroscopy and their selection rules. We all remember solving organic and inorganic puzzles based on 1D and 2D NMR spectra during our undergraduate (and graduate...) times.
This lecture, targeted for all aficionados of NMR (and those who want to become one), will concentrate on developing a detailed understanding of the origin of NMR chemical shift, and how it can be used to reconstruct the electronic structure of molecules, in particular organometallic intermediates. This lecture will also aim to show that the angular momentum operator has an “ideal” symmetry, that makes NMR a privilege spectroscopic descriptor of reactivity.