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\title{American Chemical Society AMA: Hi, my name is Paul Helquist, Professor
and Associate Chair of Chemistry \& Biochemistry, at the University of
Notre Dame. Ask me anything about organic synthesis and my career.}



\author[1]{AmerChemSocietyAMA }%
\author[1]{r/Science AMAs}%
\affil[1]{Affiliation not available}%


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  \date{April 23, 2026}


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\begin{abstract}
Hi, my name is Paul Helquist, Professor and Associate Chair of Chemistry
and Biochemistry, at the University of Notre Dame. I was a native of
Northern Minnesota where I grew up literally in the ``sticks'' on a
small lake surrounded by woods somewhere north of Duluth on the way to
the Canadian border. I attended school in a small town of 2,000 people
15 miles away from our home and was the stereotypical example of the
first member of our extended family to attend college. I enrolled at the
University of Minnesota, Duluth, in 1965 on a free-ride scholarship,
which paid for my full tuition, which was all of \$400 per year in those
days. I had the common problem of deciding upon a major and a career. I
kept wavering back and forth among physics, astronomy, medicine, and
dentistry but not yet chemistry. I initially opted for physics, but in
the midst of taking some chemistry courses as required for physics
majors, I was working on lab course experiments one day when a brand
new, gung-ho assistant professor, Bob Carlson, came into the lab and
said ``Follow me.'' I was a little taken aback, but he took me, greatly
bewildered, to his very small two-person research lab and said ``This is
where you're going to work'' as a substitute for taking that lab course.
That was a very fateful event. It was a synthetic organic chemistry lab.
I quickly fell in love with the research, changed my major to chemistry,
and was very fortunate to be able to publish two journal articles with
Bob Carlson. My odyssey in synthetic organic chemistry continued at
Cornell where I earned my M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in a little over three
years under the direction of another young, super enthusiastic assistant
professor, Martin Semmelhack, and at Harvard where I did postdoctoral
research for a year and a half with Nobel Laureate E. J. Corey. I was
then set to begin my own career at age 27, but I had tremendous
difficulty making a decision about which of the positions to accept that
had been offered to me at a pharmaceutical company, chemical companies,
or universities. Well here I am now, after choosing the academic route
and having been a faculty member for 42 years. In 1974, I began as an
assistant professor at SUNY Stony, and in 1984, I was recruited to Notre
Dame when it was entering a period of tremendous investment and growth
in graduate and research programs. This career path has led to living
and working in several places, including Minnesota, New York,
Massachusetts, Indiana, and even in Sweden and Denmark, where I have
held a number of visiting positions. I teach undergraduate and graduate
courses in organic chemistry and run a research group, which has
generated over 180 publications and patents in the following areas:
development of new synthetic methods; design and development of
transition metal reagents and catalysts for selective synthetic
reactions; total synthesis of natural products synthesis; and
applications to new pharmaceuticals, including antibacterial and
antitumor agents and treatments for rare inherited diseases as part of
an international network of collaborators in the U.S.A., Europe, and
Asia. A therapeutic agent developed in my lab is currently being used in
an FDA-approved human clinical trial. I have also served in many
university administrative and service positions, as Chair of the
Chemistry Board of Examiners for the Graduate Records Examination at the
Educational Testing Service, as the Director of the National Science
Foundation Workshop for College Teachers of Organic Chemistry, as a
regional and national leader in the Siemens Math, Science, and
Technology Competition, as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry,
and head of an Indiana state-wide program for clinical translational
research at Indiana University, Purdue, and Notre Dame. Since 1981, I
have offered special courses on advanced synthetic organic chemistry on
over 140 occasions at sites throughout the U.S.A., Canada, and Europe
under the auspices of the American Chemical Society and several other
sponsors. My present ACS course, ``Organic Synthesis: Methods and
Strategies for the 21st Century Chemist,'' emphasizes the latest
developments in this field and is next scheduled for this coming
November 7-8 in San Francisco followed by several offerings in 2017. I
am very enthusiastic about answering as many questions as time permits
about any of the aspects of the career area in which I have spent the
last half century. I will be back at 11:00 a.m. EDT to answer your
questions! I am now on line until noon EDT. I will be off line until
later in the afternoon after I finish heading a faculty meeting and a
few other duties. I am back again (2:00 pm EDT). I will mix the rest of
the afternoon with meeting in my office with my research students and
with responding to your Reddit questions. OK, I have run out to time for
today at 4:45 pm EDT. I greatly appreciate the huge number of questions
and responses, including ones that were in direct contrast with mine.
That is what makes for a good chat room.%
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