Robert Bergman (Ph.D. ’66, Berson) has earned the Wolf Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the activation of carbon-hydrogen bonds of hydrocarbons by soluble transition metal complexes. Bergman is Gerald E.K. Branch Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and faculty senior scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Wolf Foundation, based in Israel, awards the $100,000 Wolf Prize each year to a number of recipients in the areas of chemistry, mathematics, physics, medicine, and the arts. The prize is widely considered to be second in importance only to the Nobel Prize.
“I want to emphasize that the work resulting in this award was due in no small part to the intellectual, experimental, and theoretical contributions of the students and postdoctoral associates who have worked closely with me during my career,” Bergman told Chemical & Engineering News.