According to Jacobsen, maintaining interest in the research under study is the key to being productive.

"Many times, interesting things turn out to be useful," he says. When practicality is the only concern of research, Jacobsen says, there is a tendency to miss both that which is useful and that which is interesting.

Jacobsen points to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as an example of interesting research that later led to important developments. MRI is the use of a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer to produce electronic images of human cells, tissues and organs.

MRI has become an important tool in the battle against cancer because the pictures produced by MRI help detect clusters of cancerous cells and tumors.

Jacobsen cites MRI as a classic example of a basic, fundamental research which has led to something practical and useful.

"This is a case where the scientists doing this research really had no idea what its practical applications would be," he said. It wasn't until later that people discovered the practical applications of MRI.

Jacobsen says MRI indicates the importance of doing research which is interesting although not necessarily practical.

"The connection between fundamental research and real-life applications isn't always obvious," he says. "What we've tried to do [in the Jacobsen Group] is develop very practical reactions from things that are interesting."

Catalysts

Although Jacobsen emphasizes the importance of studying chemical reactions for their interest value, it is practical research which marks the foundation of Jacobsen's career.

Much of his research focuses on the design and development of catalysts for industrial use. Catalysts are substances, usually used in small amounts relative to the starting materials, which increase the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process.

Jacobsen says his main concern is the study of catalysts with chirality, or handedness. A catalyst with this quality is capable of distinguishing between molecules which are mirror images of each other in the same way that a person's left and right hand are mirror images.

A catalyst without this quality can only distinguish between two completely different molecules in the same way that a rubber ball feels differently into a hand or foot, but fits the same in the left or right hand.

The professor is currently working to synthesize new catalysts using combinatorial chemistry.

He said it took him and his group more than three years to produce about 200 epoxidation catalysts before finding a workable design for use in the epoxide-forming reaction. A Harvard postdoctoral researcher recently synthesized more than 1,200 simpler molecules in one week using the techniques of combinatorial chemistry, Jacobsen said.