Marta Catellani
Marta Catellani, a professor at the Department of Chemical, Life and Environmental Sustainability Sciences of the University of Parma, is a renowned Italian chemist best known for discovering the Catellani reaction in 1997 — a palladium/norbornene-catalyzed multistep process that revolutionized the selective functionalization of aromatic compounds. Her work has had significant impact in the fields of organic synthesis, pharmaceutical development, and materials science.
Among the honors she has received, she was the first woman to receive the American Chemical Society's "H.C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods" in 2023.
Catellani earned her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Parma in 1971, where she pursued her academic career, later becoming Chair of the Department of Organic Chemistry. She also conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and held visiting professorships at institutions such as Moscow State University and the Beijing Institute of Technology.