Professor Antonio Echavarren FRSC

Winner: 2023 Organic Chemistry open Prize: Pedler Prize

Institut Català d'Investigació Química

For pioneering contributions to the field of organic chemistry employing gold catalysis.

Celebrate Professor Antonio Echavarren

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It is a great honour for me to be included in the list of prestigious organic chemists that have been awarded the Pedler Prize.
Professor Antonio Echavarren

Professor Echavarren’s team in Tarragona has discovered a new reactivity of gold that can be easily applied for the construction of complex organic molecules of relevance in biology or materials science.

Read winner biography

Professor Antonio M Echavarren obtained his PhD in 1982 from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). After a postdoctoral stay at Boston College, he joined the UAM as an Assistant Professor in 1984. Following a two-year period as a NATO-fellow at Colorado State University, he joined the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. He returned in 1992 to the UAM as Professor of Organic Chemistry. He has also been Professor of Research of the CSIC since 2004. In the same year, Antonio moved to Tarragona as Group Leader at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ).

Antonio’s awards include the Gold Medal of the RSEQ (2010), the Arthur C Cope Scholar Award (2015), the Enrique Moles National Award in Chemical Science and Technology (2022). He also received two ERC Advanced Grants (2013 and 2019). Antonio is the President of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry.

Q&A

How did you first become interested in chemistry?

I was already interested in chemistry at the age of 9. As a teenager, I use to play with chemicals at home. Later, I was also interested in biology, but, finally, I found chemistry more fascinating.

What motivates you?

What motivates me is curiosity and the desire to learn. This includes chemistry, literature, music, and the wonders of the natural world through photography.

Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?

A particularly exciting scientific development in chemistry would be the creation of entirely artificial life.

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