John Kenneth Stille

Who was John Kenneth Stille?

John Kenneth Stille was an American chemist who discovered the Stille reaction. He received B.A and M.A. degrees from the University of Arizona before serving in the Navy during the Korean War. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, where he studied under Carl Marvel. Stille began his independent career at the University of Iowa in 1957 before moving to Colorado State University in 1977.

While at the University of Arizona Stille met his wife-to-be Dolores Engelking. He and Dolores were married in 1958 and had two sons, John Robert and James Kenneth.

Stille was killed at age 59 in the United Airlines Flight 232 crash at Sioux City, Iowa.

In 2010 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for their work on palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions. The Stille reaction is a key part of palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling chemistry, and it is widely regarded that John Stille was a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize before his untimely death.