Donna Gail Blackmond

Quantitative approach and deep mechanistic insights inform her research in areas including reaction kinetics, nonlinear effects in asymmetric catalysis, crystallization of chiral molecules, and the origins of life. Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis, methodology conceived by Blackmond, is widely used in mechanistic studies of organic reactions. She has developed physical and chemical models for the origin of biological homochirality, one of the significant unanswered questions concerning the origins of life. Her interdisciplinary, often collaborative research - expanding upon classic principles of physical organic chemistry - has reinvigorated this field in the context of the most exciting research challenges of our time.