“He has told us about catalysts and different catalytic species … which were just pipe dreams.” SN10
When Cornella heard a speaker at a 2014 conference say that bismuth was nontoxic, he was sure it was a mistake. Bismuth is. But it is indeed relatively nontoxic — it’s even used in the over-the-counter nausea medicine Pepto-Bismol.
Cornella started wondering if an element like bismuth could be trained for use as a catalyst. For the last century, scientists have been using transition metals, like palladium and iron, as the main catalysts in industrial synthesis. “Could we actually train [bismuth] to do what these guys do so well?” he asked. It was a conceptual question that “was completely naïve, or maybe stupid.”
“A lot of people, including myself and other [researchers] around the world, have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make bismuth reactions catalytic,” Nelson says. “He’s the guy who cracked that nut.”While the bismuth research is “weird” and “exciting,” Cornella says, it remains a proof of concept. Bismuth, though cheap, is not as abundant as he had hoped, so it’s not a very sustainable option for industry.
Today he runs a lab that champions taking risks. He encourages students to learn from one another about areas they know nothing about. For instance, a pure organic chemist could come into Cornella’s lab and leave with a good understanding of organometallic chemistry after spending long days working alongside a colleague who is an expert in that area.
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