Irina Beletskaya

Who is Irina Beletskaya?

Irina Beletskaya is a professor of chemistry at Moscow State University, where she serves as head of the Organoelement Chemistry laboratory. She specialises in organometallic chemistry and its application to problems in organic chemistry. She is best known for her studies on aromatic reaction mechanisms, as well as work on carbanion acidity and reactivity. She developed some of the first methods for carbon-carbon bond formation using palladium or nickel catalysts, and extended these reactions to work in aqueous media. She also helped to open up the chemistry of organolanthanides. She is an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a former president of the Division of Organic Chemistry of IUPAC, and she has served as editor-in-chief of the Russian Journal of Organic Chemistry.