Biography

Todd Marder received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from M.I.T. (1976) where he worked with Professor Alan Davison, FRS and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles (1981), where he was a University of California Regents Intern Fellow working with Professor Fred Hawthorne. Following postdoctoral research with Professor F. G. A. Stone, CBE, FRS at the University of Bristol in England, he spent two years as a Visiting Research Scientist at the Central Research and Development Department at DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware.

He joined the faculty at the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1985, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1989 and to Full Professor in 1993. In 1995, he was the recipient of the Rutherford Memorial Medal for Chemistry of the Royal Society of Canada, given each year to the leading chemist in the country under 40 years of age. He moved to the University of Durham in England in 1997 to take the Chair in Inorganic Chemistry, previously held by Prof. Ken Wade. In 2008, he was the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Main Group Element Chemistry for his contributions to the chemistry of boron and its organometallic compounds and to their applications in the development of catalysts and chromophores. In 2010, he was awarded a JSPS Invitation Fellowship by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and a Wolfson Research Merit Award by the Royal Society, UK. In 2012, he joined the Institut für Anorganische Chemie, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), Germany, as Professor and Chair I of Inorganic Chemistry, where he is also the Co-Head of the Institute for Sustainable Chemistry & Catalysis with Boron (ICB). In 2023, he became a Senior Professor at JMU.

In 2015, he was elected to membership in the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Bavarian Academy of Sciences), and was also recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Organometallic Chemistry. In 2018, he was offered a 1000-Foreign Talents Award for Foreign Experts, Selected by the Recruitment Program of 1000-Talents of the Chinese Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs, and offered a “National Chair Professorship” at Tongji University under “Recruitment program of Global Experts” which he declined. Also in 2018, he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and awarded Docteur Honoris Causa, Université de Rennes 1, France. In 2019, he was elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc). In 2022/2023, he was awarded a second JSPS Invitation Fellowship by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2024, he was elected Member of the Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe).

He has held Visiting Professorships in the UK, France, Hong Kong, Japan, China and India and he was the David Craig Visiting Professor at the Australian National University in 2014. He has held a Jiangnan Distinguished Professorship at Jiangnan University, and holds an Adjunct Professorship in Chemistry at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, an Honorary Professorship at Durham University, a guest Professorship at Shandong University, and a Visiting Professorship at Northeast Normal University. He has served on the editorial boards of Organometallics, Inorganic Chemistry, the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, Polyhedron, Inorganica Chimica Acta, Applied Organometallic Chemistry, the Canadian Journal of Chemistry, Crystal Engineering, the Chinese Journal of Chemistry, and Chemistry Central Journal (now BMC Chemistry). He has published 443 papers, and presented 442 invited lectures worldwide. His publications have been cited over 33,000 times (h-index = 102 on WoS and 103 on Google Scholar). Over 45 former co-workers hold or have held academic positions around the world.

His diverse research interests include organometallic and metal-boron chemistry, homogeneous catalysis, small molecule triggers of stem cell differentiation, luminescence, nonlinear optics, live-cell imaging, sensing of DNAs/RNAs/proteins, liquid crystals, and crystal engineering. His research has been supported both by grant agencies and by multinational companies including ICI, Johnson Matthey Catalysts, Syngenta Ltd., GlaxoSmithKline, and Imperial Oil, and SME’s such as Reinnervate Ltd. and High Force Research Ltd. While much of his work is fundamental science, real world applications are always considered when appropriate. For example, a small molecule trigger of stem cell differentiation developed jointly with Profs. Whiting and Pryzborski (Durham University) was commercialized and the diboron reagent bis(neopentylglycolato)diboron (B₂neop₂) developed jointly with Prof. N.C. Norman (Bristol University) is produced worldwide in ton quantities.