Denmark was born in Lynbrook, New York in 1953. He attended MIT as an undergraduate and during his studies he was involved in research with both Richard H. Holm on ferredoxin analogs and Daniel S. Kemp on functionalized cyclophanes. He received his S.B. degree from MIT in 1975. His graduate studies were conducted at ETH Zürich under the supervision of Albert Eschenmoser. Denmark received the D. Tech. Sc. degree in 1980 for his thesis On the Stereochemistry of the S N’ Reaction. Denmark was the third Eschenmoser lecturer in 2018, the first former Eschenmoser graduate student thus honored.
Research
Denmark began his independent academic research career in 1980 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his laboratory's early work focused on investigation of the Nazarov cyclization reaction and Claisen rearrangement. This work was later recognized by the Frederick Stanley Kipping Award to Denmark in 2014. Other interests in Denmark's group include nitroalkene related cycloaddition reactions, phosphorus-stabilized anions, aldol chemistry, asymmetric allylmetal chemistry, silicon-based cross-coupling reactions, phase-transfer catalysis, water-gas shift reaction, and organocatalysis. His work on the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction with vinylsilanol and arylrsilanol has been recognized as the Hiyama-Denmark coupling. Significant interests of Denmark's also include asymmetric catalysis with main group elements, also known as Lewis base catalysis, which is a subclass of organocatalysis. He developed the paradigm of Lewis base activation of Lewis acids and successfully applied it to the asymmetric addition of a broad range of nucleophiles to sily ketene acetals, iodo- and bromo-functionalization of alkenes, and enantioselective thio- and seleno-functionalization of alkenes. His work has yielded several Lewis base catalysts that are chiral phosphoramide derivatives. Unlike other organocatalysts, the Lewis base catalysts operate without the assistance of H-bonding, therefore avoiding drawbacks and have a broad substrate scope. An additional area of research for the Denmark group is the observation and characterization of the pre-transmetalation species of the boron-palladium adduct in Suzuki reactions using rapid-injection NMR techniques. Denmark also has research interests in computational chemistry and chemoinformatics, organizinc chemistry, and catalysis with nanoparticles. Denmark has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles and 27 book chapters and edited several book volumes including: Topics in Stereochemistry,, Organic Reactions, and Lewis Base Catalysis in Organic Synthesis. He has been an editor of Organic Syntheses since 1994 and the editor-in-chief and president since 2008. Denmark is known for his intensity and enthusiasm as an advisor; students who worked with him early in his research career later recalled their self-description as "Denmark's Disciples" in a retrospective recognizing his contributions.
