Gregory L. Hillhouse

Much of his work focused on creating organometallic compounds to stabilize and isolate reactive intermediates, molecules that are proposed to exist briefly during a larger catalytic reaction progress.

He then became a postdoctoral research associate at California Institute of Technology, before taking a position in the department of chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1983.

For example, in 2001 Hillhouse and co-workers synthesized a complex that refuted the notion that it was impossible for late transition metals like nickel to form multiple bonds with heteroatoms.

Later the group published a study showcasing that one can also synthesize and isolated an electronically similar phosphinidine species.

[3] Additionally, using bulky N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands, Hillhouse and co-workers showed that one can stabilize a linear two-coordinate Ni-based imido species.