In the world of organic chemistry, few scientists have accomplished so much so fast as Professor of Chemistry Eric N. Jacobsen.

A specialist in organo-metallic catalysts, Jacobsen is best known among undergraduates for teaching Chemistry 20, "Organic Chemistry."

But he has also gained international acclaim by leading the first group to develop an epoxide-forming reaction. An epoxide is a ring-shaped organic molecule consisting of an oxygen atom and two carbon atoms bonded together.

This reaction occurs in living organisms only when the enzymes which perform the reaction are too slow and inefficient for laboratory usage, Jacobsen says.

Thus, Jacobsen's development allows scientists to use the catalyst in the lab, and is currently being used by drug companies like Merck to produce drug candidates to fight AIDS.

Jacobsen says most scientists marvel at how quickly we have learned about AIDS.

"Scientists are impressed that things have progressed as [fast] as they have," he says.

Scientists now understand most of the molecular mechanism of AIDS, although they have only known of the disease for about 15 years, Jacobsen says.

But the general public does not understand the rate of scientific advancement, he says, a problem he attributes to a failure to communicate on the part of scientists.

"The attitude has been, 'don't talk to us until we have an answer,'" he said, adding that public expectation might be more realistic if scientists were better at giving progress reports.

He says he believes chemists and biologists have not been as good as NASA at capturing the public's imagination.

"The closer we got to the moon during the Apollo missions, the more the public thought that anything was possible even though we weren't really landing on the moon," he says. "With AIDS, every step is just as exciting, though not as useful as the final answer."

Interest

Jacobsen says the most important element of his research is studying chemical reactions for their interest value alone.

He says genuine interest in the subject matter is directly responsible for the success of the Jacobsen Group. "When we started research, we started with the notion that we wanted to study interesting reactions," he says.