The Peter Anthony Leermakers Symposium

The Peter A. Leermakers Symposium was created in memory of Professor Peter Leermakers of the Wesleyan Chemistry Department, who died tragically in 1971. The following year, Professor Max Tishler launched the symposium in Leermakers’s honor and, through his extensive connections in the chemistry community, attracted some of the world’s leading scientists as speakers.

Held each May from 1972 to 2006—with additional symposia in 2010 and 2012—the Leermakers Symposium brought eminent chemists from the United States and around the world to Wesleyan for in-depth presentations and discussion centered on a single topic of current interest in chemistry. The first symposium explored the chemistry of vitamin B₁₂ and featured the late Robert B. Woodward (1965 Nobel Laureate), who presented his landmark total synthesis of the molecule. In subsequent years, topics included natural product biosynthesis, theoretical chemistry, extraterrestrial chemistry, and chemical reaction dynamics.