I am pleased to dedicate this SYNLETT Cluster in honor of Professor Shunichi Fukuzumi’s 70th birthday. Prof. Fukuzumi is currently a Distinguished Professor at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea and Professor Emeritus of Osaka University, Japan. He completed his bachelor’s degree in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978 from the Tokyo Institute of Technology with Professor Yoshio Ono. He then travelled to the United States for a postdoctoral fellowship in Prof. Jay Kochi’s laboratory at Indiana University from 1978 to 1981. Following his postdoctoral work, he returned to Japan in 1981 as an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry, Osaka University with Professor Toshio Tanaka, eventually rising to the rank of full professor in 1994. Prof. Fukuzumi has had an extraordinarily productive career, authoring over 1,100 research articles that are cited over 60,000 times in the general areas of photophysics, electron transfer and radical chemistry.
Early in his independent career, Prof. Fukuzumi published some of the first examples of photoinduced electron transfer reactions of flavins with tetra-alkyl tin reagents[1] to generate alkyl radical species. In addition, key experiments from Fukuzumi and Tanaka demonstrated that a-bromoacetophenones underwent hydrodebromination reactions with a Ru(bpy)3
2+ photoredox catalyst (Figure [1]).[2] These seminal studies would go on to inspire a wealth of new reactivity for organic chemistry and importantly, were some of the first photoredox reactions applied to synthesis.
Figure 1 Fukuzumi and Tanaka’s hydrodebromination of bromoketones via photoredox catalysis
The field of organic photoredox catalysis in synthesis, in particular, owes Prof. Fukuzumi credit for his groundbreaking work on acridinium photooxidation catalysts and the characterization of their excited-state dynamics. In 2004, he reported the characterization and excited-state dynamics of the eponymous acridinium salt 9-mesityl-10-methylacridinium (Mes-Acr) (Figure [2]),[3] which is a potent one-electron photooxidation catalyst that has been utilized in a plethora of catalytic transformations,[4] and has inspired the synthesis of numerous derivatives of this important catalyst structure.[5]
[6]
Figure 2 The Fukuzumi acridinium photooxidant
For my own selfish reasons, I felt that this cluster would be a fitting honor for Prof. Fukuzumi, as my laboratory has benefitted greatly from his seminal work; the field of organic photoredox catalysis has as well. Though we are a little past his birthday now, we are still very happy to dedicate this issue to Prof. Shunichi Fukuzumi on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and we are excited to present the invited articles in the following pages.
David Nicewicz
July 2022
