David Milstein PhD

David Milstein is the Israel Matz Professorial Chair of Organic Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he was Head of the Kimmel Center for Molecular Design. He is known particularly for his work on the activation of strong chemical bonds by metal complexes, and the design of efficient, environmentally benign, catalytic reactions for synthetic and energy applications.

David Milstein received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1976 and performed post-doctoral research at Colorado State University, where together with his advisor, John Stille, he co-discovered the well-known C-C bond-forming Stille Reaction. In 1979 he joined DuPont Company’s Central Research and Development Department, where he became a Group Leader, and in 1987 he moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science. His awards in recent years include the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry; the RSC Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Award; the Meitner Humboldt Senior Research Award; the Israel Prize (Israel’s highest honor); the ENI Environmental Protection Prize; the Gold Medal of the Israel Chemical Society; and the European Prize for Organometallic Chemistry. He is a member of the Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences-Leopoldina.