Rare Earths—The Answer to Everything

Dr. Florian Jaroschik obtained his M.Sc. in chemistry from the Universität Regensburg, Germany, in 2004. For his Ph.D. studies, he moved to the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, where he worked under the supervision of Dr. F. Nief in the field of low valent organolanthanide chemistry. After two one-year postdoctoral positions at Monash University, Australia, with Profs. G. Deacon and P. Junk in organolanthanide chemistry, and at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI, with Profs. L. Fensterbank and M. Malacria in gold catalysis, he joined the Institut de Chimie Moléculaire de Reims, France, as a CNRS Research Associate in November 2009. In 2017, he moved to the Institut Charles Gerhardt in Montpellier where he currently works on the synthesis and applications of new organolanthanide complexes and the development of new transformations in organic synthesis based on lanthanide metals, with a special focus on C-F bond activation.

Prof. Dr. Glen B. Deacon works as an Emeritus Professor in the School of Chemistry at Monash University. He graduated with a B.Sc. (Hons) (HI) and a Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide. His postdoctoral research work was carried out with Professor Sir Ronald Nyholm FRS at University College London with an additional collaboration with Professor Alwyn Davies FRS (UCL) and Dr John Green (NPL Teddington). He was appointed to a lectureship at Monash in 1966 and Senior Lecturer (1971) and Reader (1975). For his research work on Main Group Element Chemistry, he was awarded the DSc degree from the University of Adelaide in 1972. He became a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1975. In 1994, he was appointed to a Personal Chair in Chemistry and was Professor of Chemistry from 2002 to 2012 when he was appointed Professor Emeritus. From 2002 to 2004, he served on the Committee of Experts of the Australian Research Council. In 2005–2006, he was a Senior Adviser in the Monash Research Office. In 2020, he was appointed to an Honorary Professorship at the Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) at Deakin University. In 2006, he was awarded the Terrae Rarae Prize for Rare Earth Chemistry, and in 2007, he received the Burrows Award of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute for Inorganic Chemistry. In 2012, the SO3 elimination synthesis of organometallic compounds discovered by the Deacon group in the 1970s was named the Deacon reaction (Organometallics, 2012, 31, 1801).

Peter C. Junk is a Nevitt Professor of Chemistry at James Cook University. He graduated from The University of Western Australia in 1984, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, and completed his Ph.D. in Organometallic Chemistry in 1988. His main research interests are in rare earth and main group organometallic, organoids, and aryloxo chemistry, but he has applied interests in X-ray imaging and corrosion inhibition. He is the 2016 recipient of the Burrows Award, the premier award for Inorganic Chemistry at the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.