Gerard Parkin

Gerard Parkin
Gerard Parkin
Residence	United Kingdom, United States
Fields	Chemistry (main group and transition metal)
Institutions	Columbia University
Alma mater	The Queen's College, Oxford
Doctoral advisor	Malcolm Green
Notable awards	Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (2009); ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry (2008); Corday–Morgan Medal (1995); ACS Award in pure chemistry (1994)
	Website; www.columbia.edu/cu/chemistry/groups/parkin/index.html

Gerard "Ged" Parkin is a professor of chemistry at Columbia University.

Biography

Gerard Parkin attended the English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College before working under Malcolm Green during both his undergraduate and graduate studies at Queens College of Oxford University. His work involved exploring the chemistry of tungsten phosphine derivatives. He obtained a post-doctoral position at the California Institute of Technology working with Professor John Bercaw on tungstenocene reactivity. In 1988, Ged joined the faculty at Columbia University, where he currently investigates a myriad of problems in main group and transition metal chemistry, including:

Calixarene complexes
Retrodative bonding, especially related to boratranes
Group 6 reactivity relating to X-H (X=H, C, O) bond activation, hydrodesulfurization and hydrodenitrogenation
The Tris(mercaptoimidazolyl) borate Tm ligand
Terminal chalcogen metal bonding
Zinc complexes as models for biological systems
Antimony alkoxides and aryloxides
Cleaving the mercury–carbon bond.^[1]

Parkin received the 2008 ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry^[2] and the 1994 ACS Award in pure chemistry^[3] from the American Chemical Society. He also received the Corday–Morgan Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1995.^[4] In 2009 he received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, an award that was presented at a White House ceremony.^[5]