George M. Sheldrick
George Michael Sheldrick (born November 17, 1942 in Huddersfield , England ) is a British chemist who deals with the structure determination of molecules. From 1978 until his retirement in 2011 he taught at the University of Göttingen .
biography
Sheldrick studied science at the University of Cambridge and began his doctorate in 1963 with Evelyn Ebsworth in inorganic chemistry , which he completed in 1966. The topic of his dissertation was the investigation of inorganic hydrides using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). He then held various positions, including as a lecturer in the Faculty of Chemistry in Cambridge, before he was appointed to the University of Göttingen in 1978, where he is still active today.
The chemist William S. Sheldrick (1945–2015), until his retirement in 2010 Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, was his younger brother.
plant
Sheldrick is working on structure elucidation through X-ray diffraction . To this end, he developed the SHELX program suite , which was originally developed for the analysis of small molecules.
Direct methods (see Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle ) use statistical methods to solve the crystallographic phase problem . They are implemented in the SHELXS program, but are only suitable for crystal structures in high resolution (mostly small molecules). SHELXS also offers the semi-automatic solution of the Patterson function (Patterson superposition). When determining the structure of protein crystals , the problem arises that the X-ray data are usually not available in atomic resolution and the assumptions under which the direct methods were developed (randomly distributed point atoms) become invalid. The Shelx software today also offers solutions for this.
To solve the phase problem of macromolecules, methods are used that switch back and forth between direct and reciprocal space . These dual space methods, which were introduced by Herb Hauptman, can also be combined with the Patterson method . These macromolecule functions are implemented in the programs SHELXC, SHELXD and SHELXE. The SHELXL program is suitable for the structure refinement of both small and large molecules using the least squares method .
Due to the number of his citations, Clarivate Analytics has been one of the favorites for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry ( Clarivate Citation Laureates ) since 2018 .
Awards
- 1970 Meldola Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry
- 1978 Corday Morgan Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry
- 1988 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation
- 1999 Carl Hermann Medal of the German Society for Crystallography
- 2004 Max Perutz Prize of the European Crystallographic Association
- 2009 Gregori Aminoff Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- 2011 Ewald Prize of the International Union of Crystallography
literature
- GM Sheldrick: A short history of SHELX . In: Acta Crystallographica Section A. Foundations of Crystallography . Volume 64, Part 1, January 2008, pp. 112-122
- Peter Muller, Regine Herbst-Irmer, Anthony Spek, Thomas Schneider and Michael Sawaya: Crystal Structure Refinement. A Crystallographer's Guide to SHELXL . Oxford University Press, 2006
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Retirement 2011
- ↑ George Michael Sheldrick: Curriculum Vitae
- ^ Rüdiger W. Seidel: William S. Sheldrick (1945-2015). In: Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry. 641, 2015, p. 750, doi: 10.1002 / zaac.201510005 .
- ^ Clarivate Analytics Reveals Annual Forecast of Future Nobel Prize Recipients. In: clarivate.com. Clarivate Analytics, September 20, 2018, accessed September 20, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sheldrick, George M. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sheldrick, George Michael (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British chemist, field of work: X-ray structure elucidation |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 17, 1942 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Huddersfield , England |