Tamejiro Hiyama


Tamejiro Hiyama is a Japanese organic chemist. He is best known for his work in developing the Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi reaction and the Hiyama coupling. He is currently a professor at the Chuo University Research and Development Initiative, and a Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University.

Career

Hiyama received his Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Engineering from Kyoto University. He dropped out of the doctorate track in 1972, and subsequently started working as an assistant for Hitoshi Nozaki at Kyoto University. In 1975, he obtained his doctoral degree, and during 1975-1976 conducted postdoctoral research with Yoshito Kishi at Harvard University. In 1981, he started working at the Sagami Chemical Research Center, and became a principal investigator in 1983, and then chief laboratory manager in 1988.
In 1992, he re-entered the world of academia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology as a professor of the Research Laboratory of Resources Utilization. He then returned to Kyoto University in 1997 as a professor of engineering, until 2010 when he transferred to Chuo University, where he currently holds tenure.
His current research focuses on C-H activation and cross-coupling reactions. In particular, he is interested in ortho and benzylic C-H activation, and C-C, C-N, and C-Si bond formation via cross-coupling with organosilicon reagents.
In his spare time, he enjoys listening to classical music. His favorite way of spending a holiday is “cleaning small garden by picking out weeds one by one”, which is “good psychological training for a Buddhist priest”.

Major Contributions

Hiyama is best known for developing:
It was originally discovered in 1977, where Hiyama and Nozaki reported a chemospecific synthesis of homoallyl alcohols from an aldehyde and allyl halide using chromium chloride.
In 1983, Hiyama and Nozaki published another paper extending the scope of the reaction to include aryl and vinyl halides.
In 1986, Nozaki and Kishi independently discovered that the reaction depended on the nickel impurities in the chromium chloride salt. Since then, nickel chloride has been used as a co-catalyst.
The NHK reaction demonstrates high chemoselectivity towards aldehydes, as it tolerates a range of functional groups, and has been used on the process scale.
Hiyama developed this reaction in 1988. He says he developed this method in order to overcome the shortcomings of Grignard reagents. While Grignard reagents are powerful, Hiyama says, they can be hard to use in total synthesis as they are not as tolerant of other functional groups.

Publications

He has published over 400 papers and 25 books over the course of his career.
Notable publications include: