Larry E. Overman
University of California, Irvine
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Primary Section: 14, Chemistry Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1996)
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Biosketch
Larry Overman was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1943 and raised in Hammond, Indiana. He obtained a B.A. degree from Earlham College in 1965 and completed his doctoral dissertation in 1969 with Professor Howard W. Whitlock, Jr. at the University of Wisconsin. After a NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Ronald Breslow at Columbia University, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine in 1971 where he is now Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. Professor Overman was Chair of the UC Irvine Department of Chemistry from 1990–1993. Professor Overman's research interests center on the invention of new transformations and strategies for the chemical synthesis of high-value organic molecules and the total synthesis of natural products and their congeners. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 where he served as Chair of the Chemistry Section (2008–2011) and in 1996 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His scientific awards include the Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the ACS Arthur C. Cope Award, the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry and the Noyori Prize.
Research Interests
Professor Overman's research interests center on the invention of new transformations and strategies for the chemical synthesis of high-value organic molecules and the total synthesis of natural products and their congeners. Through collaborations at UC Irvine and elsewhere the pharmacological activity of structural analogues of epipolythiodiketopiperidine alkaloids are being explored currently for the treatment of human cancer and for improving the cognitive decline that occurs with aging.
