Organoselenium Chemistry

Thomas Wirth is professor of organic chemistry at Cardiff University. After studying chemistry in Bonn and at the Technical University of Berlin, he obtained his PhD in 1992 with Prof. S. Blechert. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. K. Fuji at Kyoto University a JSPS fellow, he started his independent research at the University of Basel (Switzerland). In the group of Prof. B. Giese he obtained his habilitation on stereoselective oxidation reactions supported by various scholarships before taking up his current position at Cardiff University in 2000. He was invited as a visiting professor to a number of places including the University of Toronto/Canada (1999), Chuo University in Tokyo/Japan (2000), Osaka University/Japan (2004), and Osaka Prefecture University/Japan (2008) and was awarded the Werner-Prize from the New Swiss Chemical Society (2000). His main interests of research concern stereoselective electrophilic reactions, oxidative transformations with hypervalent iodine reagents including mechanistic investigations and organic synthesis performed in microreactors.

and General Aspects.- Electrophilic Selenium, Selenocyclizations.- Nucleophilic Selenium.- Radical Reactions Using Selenium Precursors.- Selenium-Stabilized Carbanions.- Selenium at Higher Oxidation State.- Selenocarbonyls.- Selenoxide Elimination and [2,3]Sigmatropic Rearrangement.- Selenium Compounds as Ligands and Catalysts.