George A. Abbott Lectureship

The Abbott Lectureship is designed to bring outstanding chemists to our department and to the area, to provide an opportunity for personal interaction with area students, practicing chemists, and faculty. We have been fortunate to have some of the most outstanding chemists in the country present these endowed lectures, including Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry.

The George A. Abbott Lectureship was established by gifts from the University of North Dakota Alumni.

The 2019 Abbott Chemistry Lectures

Dr. Cummins

 Dr. Christopher Cummins

May 2 and 3, 2019
Dr. Christopher Cummins

Christopher “Kit” Colin Cummins benefited from formative undergraduate research experiences carried out sequentially in the laboratories of Professors Susan E. Kegley, James P. Collman, and Peter T. Wolczanski, respectively of Middlebury College, Stanford University and Cornell University. He graduated from the latter institution with an A.B. degree in 1989. Following this he undertook inorganic chemistry graduate studies under the direction of Professor Richard R. Schrock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1993 with a thesis entitled “Synthetic Investigations Featuring Amidometallic Complexes”. Also in 1993 Kit joined the chemistry faculty at MIT as an Assistant Professor; in 1996 he was promoted to the rank of Professor, and in 2015 he was named the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry.

Research themes in the Cummins group showcase exploratory synthesis and reactivity studies. General areas of interest include transition-metal coordination chemistry, organometallic chemistry, small molecule activation, metal-ligand multiple bonds, and group transfer reactions. We are developing anthracene-based molecular precursors to novel reactive intermediates and potential interstellar molecules. Such anthracene-based precursors are also of interest as group transfer reagents with applications in synthesis. We are in pursuit of reagents for selective chemical polyphosphorylation. Reactions of relevance to phosphorus sustainability are under development with the goal of minimizing waste and energy consumption in the upgrading of phosphate raw materials to value-added chemicals.  

The research accomplishments of Kit’s group have been recognized with Harvard University’s E. Bright Wilson Prize, the Phi Lambda Upsilon National Fresenius Award, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, the TR100 Award, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, the Dannie-Heineman Preis of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, the ACS F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the inaugural Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award, the RSC Ludwig Mond Award, and the Linus Pauling medal. Kit has been a Fellow of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University, he is a corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, an honorary member of the Israel Chemical Society, and an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous Abbott Lectures

2018 Abbott Lecturer

2017 Abbott Lecturer

2016 Abbott Lecturer

2015 Abbott Lecturer

2014 Abbott Lecturer

2013 Abbott Lecturer

2012 Abbott Lecturer

2011 Abbott Lecturer

2010 Abbott Lecturer

2009 Abbott Lecturer

2008 Abbott Lecturer

2007 Abbott Lecturer

2006 Abbott Lecturer

2005 Abbott Lecturer

2004 Abbott Lecturer

2003 Abbott Lecturer

2002 Abbott Lecturer