Masakatsu Shibasaki


Masakatsu Shibasaki is a Japanese chemist. In 1974 he earned his doctorate in chemistry, in the group of Shun’ichi Yamada. He did a post doc with Elias J. Corey at Harvard. He returned to Japan and became a professor in 1977 at Teikyō University and moved to Hokkaidō University in 1986. 1983–1986 Shibasaki was a research group leader at the Sagami chemical research center. From 1991 until 2010 he served as professor at Tokyo University. Since 2010 he is representative director of Microbial Chemistry Research Foundation, Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for developing a range of binol based heterobimetallic catalysts, which now bear his name.

Selected publications

Organic Synthesis Directed Toward Life Science,, Kodansha, 1985.Organic Chemistry for Graduate Students,, Tokyo Kagaku Dojin, 1998.Asymmetric Reaction for the Basis of Medicinal Chemistry, (Japanese, Hirokawa ShotenStimulating Concepts in Chemistry,, VCH Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2000.Multimetallic Catalysts In Organic Synthesis,, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2004.New Development of Organocatalyst,, CMC publishing Co., Ltd., 2006.
His research interests are focussed on the development of new synthetic methods, the design of biologically significant compounds and synthetic studies of such compounds.