portrait of a man

Robert Crabtree

C.P. Whitehead Professor of Chemistry Emeritus

Member of Yale faculty since 1977.
Not accepting lab members at this time.

Research Interests

Contact Info

robert.crabtree@yale.edu

Carole Velleca 
carole.velleca@yale.edu
CRB 230

CV

Research

Design and synthesis of inorganic, coordination and organometallic molecules with unusual structures and properties. These are typically catalytic and electrocatalytic properties for atom economic (green) transformations, bioinorganic relevance or utility in alternative energy strategies, such as solar energy, nitrogen fixation, ammonia oxidation and hydrogen storage.

Education

B.A. New College, Oxford 1970
Ph.D. Sussex University 1973
Postdoctoral Fellow, CNRS, Gif-s-Yvette, France, 1973-75
Attaché de Recherche, Gif, 1975-77

Honors

  • DuPont Young Faculty Fellow, 1977
  • A.P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, 1981
  • Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, 1982
  • Corday-Morgan Medal, 1984
  • Albright and Wilson Visiting Prof., Warwick, 1986
  • Editorial Board, Chemical Reviews, 1990
  • Organometallic Chemistry Prize of RSC, 1991
  • Organometallic Chemistry Prize of ACS, 1993
  • Mack Award, Ohio State Univ., 1994
  • Chair, Div. of Inorg. Chem., ACS., 1998
  • Dow Lecturer, Univ. of Ottowa, 1999
  • ISI Highly Cited Author Award, 2000
  • Bailar Medal, Univ. of Illinois, 2001
  • Ed. Board, Coor. Chem. Rev., 2002-present
  • Dow Lecturer, Berkeley, Williams Lecture, Oxford, 2004
  • Sabatier Lecture, Toulouse; Brewster Lecture, Kansas, 2006
  • Board of Regional Editors, Science, 2006-present 
  • Karcher Medal (Oklahoma), 2007
  • Pedersen Lecture (duPont), Lutz Lecture (U Va), 2008
  • John Osborn Lecturer (Strasbourg); Mond Lecture Series, Roy. Soc.
  • Chem; Shore Lecture (Ohio State U), 2009
  • Kosolapoff Award (ACS and Auburn Univ), 2010
  • Rothchild Lecture (Rochester U), 2010
  • Stauffer Lecture (USC), 2010
  • C.P. Whitehead Professor, Yale, 2010
  • King Lecture (U Ga), 2011
  • Fellow of ACS, 2011
  • Fellow of IUPAC, 2011
  • Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2011
  • McElvain Lecture (U Wisc., Madison), 2013
  • Yale Postdoctoral Mentoring Award, 2013
  • Siedle Lecture (U Indiana), 2014
  • Centenary Award (Roy. Soc. Chem.), 2014
  • Goates Award (Wyoming), 2015
  • D.Sc.(Hon) Bath Univ. UK, 2016
  • Eisch Lecture (SUNY, Binghampton), 2016
  • Hillger Lecture (Wm. & Mary), 2016
  • Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA), 2017
  • Encycl. Reagents Org. Synth. Best Reagent Award, 2018
  • Connecticut Academy of Sciences, 2018
  • Fellow of the Royal Society, 2018
  • Crabtree Lecture founded at Yale, 2019
  • Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, from inception to 2020
  • Franco-American Prize of the French Chemical Society, 2019-2020

Recent Publications

Liu, H-Y.; Lant, H.; Troiano, J.; Hu, G.; Mercado, B.; Crabtree, R. H.; Brudvig, G. W. Electrocatalytic, Homogeneous Ammonia Oxidation in Water to Nitrate and Nitrite with a Copper Complex. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 8449-8453.

Crabtree, R. H. Alternate Strategies for Solar Fuels from Carbon Dioxide. ACS Energy Lett. 2020, 5, 2505-2507. DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.0c01359

Weber, J.; Hasanayn, F.; Fataftah, M.; Mercado, B.Q.; Crabtree, R. H.; Holland, P., Electronic and Spin-State Effects on Dinitrogen Splitting to Nitrides in a Rhenium Pincer System, Inorg. Chem. 2021, 60, 6115-6124.

Materna, K. L.; Jiang, J.; Crabtree, R. H.; Brudvig, G. W., Silatrane Anchors for Metal Oxide Surfaces: Optimization for Potential Photocatalytic and Electrocatalytic Applications, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 2018, 11, 5602-5609. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b04138

Rudshteyn, B.; Fisher, K. J.; Lant, H. M. C.; Yang, K. R.; Mercado, B.Q.; Brudvig, G.W.; Crabtree, R.H.; Batista, V.S., Water-Nucleophilic Attack Mechanism for the CuII(pyalk)2 Water-Oxidation Catalyst, ACS Catal. 2018, 8, 7952-7960.

Peris, E.; Crabtree, R. H. Key factors in pincer ligand design, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2018, 47, 1959-1968.

Sharninghausen, L. S.; Sinha, S. B.; Shopov, D. Y.; Balcells, D.; Brudvig, G. W.; Crabtree, R. H., Synthesis and Characterization of Iridium(V) Coordination Complexes With an N,O-Donor Organic Ligand. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 12047-51.

Michaelos, T.; Shopov, D. Y.; Sinha, S. B.; Sharninghausen, L. S.; Fisher, K.; Lant, H.; Crabtree, R. H.; Brudvig, G. W. A Pyridine Alkoxide Chelate Ligand that Promotes Both Unusually High Oxidation States and Water-Oxidation Catalysis, Acc. Chem. Res. 2017, 50, 952-959.