Masakatsu Shibasaki (柴崎 正勝, Shibasaki Masakatsu, born 25 January 1947) is a Japanese chemist. In 1974 he earned his doctorate in chemistry, in the group of Shun’ichi Yamada. He did a post doc with Elias J. Corey at Harvard. He returned to Japan and became a professor in 1977 at Teikyō University and moved to Hokkaidō University 1986. 1983-1986 Shibasaki was a research group leader at the Sagami chemical research center. From 1991 until 2010 he served as professor at Tokyo University. Since 2010 he is representative director of Microbial Chemistry Research Foundation (Chemistry), Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for developing a range of binol based heterobimetallic catalysts, which now bear his name.
Since 1981 many prominent prizes have been awarded to Masakatsu Shibasaki:
The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists (1981, Japan)
Inoue Prize for Science (1994, Japan)
Fluka Prize (Reagent of the Year 1996, Switzerland)
The Elsevier Award for Inventiveness in Organic Chemistry (1998, Belgium)
The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award (1999, Japan)
Molecular Chirality Award (1999, Japan)
The Naito Foundation Research Prize (2001, Japan)
Arthur C. Cope Senior Scholar Awards (2002, American Chemical Society)
Medal with Purple Ribbon (2003, Japan)
Toray Science and Technology Prize (2004, Japan)
Japan Academy Prize (2005, Japan)
Sankyo Takamine Memorial Award (2006, Japan)
Shiokawa Prize of Rare Earth Society (2006, Japan)
Centenary Medal and Lectureship (2007, Royal Society of Chemistry)
American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2008)
Prelog Award Medal of the ETH Zürich (2008, Switzerland)
Special Award of Synthetic Organic Chemistry of Japan (2010 - Japan)
Shibasaki is the author or coauthor of more than 520 scientific publications and holds ~40 patents. His Hirsch number is 73.
Books and scientific publications (selection)
Organic Synthesis Directed Toward Life Science, (Japanese), Kodansha, 1985.
Organic Chemistry for Graduate Students, (Japanese), Tokyo Kagaku Dojin, 1998.
Asymmetric Reaction for the Basis of Medicinal Chemistry, （Japanese, Hirokawa Shoten
Stimulating Concepts in Chemistry, (English), VCH Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2000.
Multimetallic Catalysts In Organic Synthesis, (English), John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2004.
New Development of Organocatalyst, (Japanese), CMC publishing Co., Ltd., 2006.
Shibasaki M, Yoshikawa N: Lanthanide complexes in multifunctional asymmetric catalysis, Chemical Reviews 102 (2002) 2187−2209.
Sasai H, Suzuki T, Arai S, Arai T, Shibasaki M: Basic Character of Rare-Earth-Metal Alkoxides - Utilization in Catalytic C-C Bond-Forming Reactions and Catalytic Asymmetric Nitroaldol Reactions, Journal of the American Chemical Society 114 (1992) 4418−4420.
Yoshikawa N, Yamada YMA, Das J, Sasai H, Shibasaki M: Direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction, Journal of the American Chemical Society 121 (1999) 4168−4178.
Yamada YMA, Yoshikawa N, Sasai H, Shibasaki M: Direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reactions of aldehydes with unmodified ketones, Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English 36 (1997) 1871−1873.
Sasai H, Arai T, Satow Y, Houk KN, Shibasaki M: The first Heterobimetallic Multifunctional Asymmetric Catalyst, Journal of the American Chemical Society 117 (1995) 6194−6198.
Shibasaki M, Boden CDJ, Kojima A: The asymmetric Heck reaction, Tetrahedron 53 (1997) 7371−7395.
Gröger H, Vogl EM, Shibasaki M: New catalytic concepts for the asymmetric aldol reaction, Chemistry - a European Journal 4 (1998) 1137−1141.
Hamashima Y, Sawada D, Kanai M, Shibasaki M: A new bifunctional asymmetric catalysis: An efficient catalytic asymmetric cyanosilylation of aldehydes, Journal of the American Chemical Society 121 (1999) 2641−2642.
Bougauchi M, Watanabe S, Arai T, Sasai H, Shibasaki M: Catalytic asymmetric epoxidation of alpha,beta-unsaturated ketones promoted by lanthanoid complexes, Journal of the American Chemical Society 119 (1997) 2329−2330.
Arai T, Sasai H, Aoe K, Okamura K, Date T, Shibasaki M: A new multifunctional heterobimetallic asymmetric catalyst for Michael additions and tandem Michael-Aldol reactions, Angewandte Chemie-International Edition in English 35 (1996) 104−106.
His research interests are focussed on the development of new synthetic methods, the design of biologically significant compounds and synthetic studies of such compounds.
