Palladium-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling: A Historical Contextual Perspective to the 2010 Nobel Prize

In 2010, Richard Heck, Ei‐ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki joined the prestigious circle of Nobel Laureate chemists for their roles in discovering and developing highly practical methodologies for CC bond construction. From their original contributions in the early 1970s the landscape of the strategies and methods of organic synthesis irreversibly changed for the modern chemist, both in academia and in industry. In this Review, we attempt to trace the historical origin of these powerful reactions, and outline the developments from the seminal discoveries leading to their eminent position as appreciated and applied today. The 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Richard Heck, Ei‐ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki for their contributions to the development of Pd‐catalyzed CC bond forming reactions. This Review traces the historical origins of the reactions these laureates discovered, and follows the three waves of research (see scheme) that led to the systematic evolution of “cross‐coupling” and the resultant proliferation of discovery within the field of metal‐catalyzed organic transformations to the present time.