One of the most important activities organized by the Backer Foundation is the yearly Backer Lecture. This prestigious lecture is always presented by a prominent scientist in molecular chemistry as illustrated by the list of previous speakers. It is an important event at our university with a long tradition. Connected to this lectures are informal scientific discussions with PhD-students, postdocs and staff of the Stratingh Institute of Chemistry and a dinner with the board of the Foundation.
Selected list of previous Backer lecturers
T. Bach (Harvard)
A. Fürstner (Austria)
C.R. Bertozzi (Harvard)
D. MacMillan (Princeton)
N.J. Leonard (Illinois)
K. Wiberg (Yale)
E.C.Taylor (Princeton)
R. Raphael (Cambridge)
E. Havinga (Leiden)
Th.J. De Boer (Amsterdam)
A. Eschenmoser (ETH)
H. Kagan (Paris)
D. Seebach (ETH)
J. Battersby (Cambridge)
A. Katritzky (Norwich)
L. Paquette (Ohio State)
A. Meyers (Colorado State)
R. Zahradnik (Prague)
N. Oppolzer (Geneva)
Klibanov (MIT)
D.A.Evans (Harvard)
A.G.M. Barrett (Imperial)
K.C. Nicolaou (Scripps)
Shinkai (Fukuoka)
Trost (Stanford)
A.J. Kirby (Cambridge)
K.B. Sharpless (Scripps)
D.A. Dougherty (Caltech)
P.H. Seeberger (Berlin)
P.J. Stang (Univ. of Utah)
S.E. Denmark (Univ. Illinois)
K.N. Raymond (Berkeley)
J.F Hartwig (Berkeley)