Manfred Bochmann is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry. He officially retired in 2019, held a part-time Professorial Fellowship since 2019 and in 2023 became Emeritus. 

Professor Bochmann gained his Diploma Degree at Marburg University, Germany (1977), and his Ph.D. at Imperial College London, with Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (1979). After a spell in industry he moved to a lectureship at UEA and became Professor of Chemistry in 1994. From 1995 -2000 he was Head of the Inorganic and Structural at the University of Leeds. He returned to UEA in April 2000. From 2006 – 2009 he was Head of the School of Chemical Sciences and Pharmacy and 2009-2011 Head of the School of Chemistry.  

He is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Medal for Organometallic Chemistry (2003) and the RSC Applied Inorganic Chemistry Award (2017). He was a vice-president of the RSC Dalton Division Council, an editorial board member of Dalton Transactions and the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry and a volume editor of a major reference work, “Comprehensive Organometallic Chemistry III” and Associate Editor of the ACS journal Organometallics 2006 - 2015. He is the author of two popular “Chemistry Primer” teaching texts in Organometallic Chemistry, co-author of the textbook Cotton, Wilkinson, Murillo and Bochmann: “Advanced Inorganic Chemistry”, 6th ed. (Wiley 1999), and author of the textbook "Organometallics and Catalysis: An Introduction" (OUP, 2014). 

He was a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow (2011-12) and an ERC Advanced Grant awardee (2014-2019).

Professor Bochmann’s research centres broadly around synthetic organometallic and coordination chemistry directed towards homogeneous catalysis. He has published >300 papers and patents in this area which have attracted over 14,000 citations, h-index 63. He was coordinator of the EC Research Training Network on new polyolefin materials and a partner in an EU-funded consortium including DSM, Sabic and Lanxess on catalyst activators. The ERC Advanced Grant supported synthetic gold chemistry, including coinage metal-based photoemissive complexes for light emitting diodes. His work has been supported by the ERC, EPSRC, Royal Society, British Council, European Commission, BP Chemicals, Bayer AG, BASF, Samsung, Lanxess Inc., Canada and SABIC Global Technologies.

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ORCID ID 0000-0001-7736-5428 

Selected Publications

Recent Advances in Gold(III) Chemistry: Structure, Bonding, Reactivity and Role in Homogeneous Catalysis. L. Rocchigiani, M. Bochmann, Chem. Rev. 2021, 120, 8364–8451.

Highly Efficient Blue Host-Free and Host-Guest Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Based on Carbene-Metal-Amides. P. J. Conaghan, C. S. B. Matthews, F. Chotard, S. T. E. Jones, N. C. Greenham, M. Bochmann, D. Credgington,  A. S. Romanov, Nat. Commun. 2020, 11, 1758. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15369-8

Carbene Metal Amide Photoemitters: Tailoring Conformationally Flexible Amides for Full Color Range Emissions Including White-Emitting OLED. A. S. Romanov, S. T. E. Jones, Q. Gu, P. J. Conaghan, B. H. Drummond, J. Feng, F. Chotard, L. Buizza, M. Foley,M. Linnolahti, D. Credgington, M. Bochmann, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 435-446.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C9SC04589A

Unlocking Structural Diversity in Gold(III) Hydrides: Unexpected Interplay of cis /trans-Influence on Stability, Insertion Chemistry and NMR Chemical Shifts. L. Rocchigiani, J. Fernandez–Cestau, I. Chambrier, P. Hrobarik, M. Bochmann, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018, 140, 8287−8302.

High-performance light-emitting diodes based on carbene-metal-amides. D. Di, A. S. Romanov, L. Yang, J. M. Richter, J. P. H. Rivett, S. Jones, T. H. Thomas, M. A. Jalebi, R. H. Friend, M. Linnolahti, M. Bochmann, D. Credgington, Science 2017, 356, 159–163. DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4345

D.-A. Roşca, J. Fernandez-Cestau, J. Morris, J. A. Wright, M. Bochmann.
Gold(III) CO and CO2 Complexes and Their Role in the Water-Gas Shift Reaction
Sci. Adv. 2015, 1, e1500761.

Reviews:
An element through the looking glass: Exploring the Au-C, Au-H and Au-O energy landscape
D.-A. Roşca, J. A. Wright and M. Bochmann, Dalton Transactions 2015, 44, 20785 – 20807
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5DT03930D

The Chemistry of Catalyst Activation: The Case of Group 4 Polymerization Catalysts.
M. Bochmann, Organometallics 2010, 29, 4711 – 4740.
DOI: 10.1021/ar100044s

Synthetic inorganic, organometallic and coordination chemistry

Invention of new molecules

Identification of active species in homogeneous catalysts

Olefin polymerisation catalysis, leading to process optimisation

Organometallic chemistry of gold

Luminescent coinage metal complexes for use in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)