chemistry

Virgil Percec

Virgil Percec is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Virgil Percec rather than just read about it. In short: Virgil Percec (born December 8, 1946) is a Romanian-American chemist and P. Roy Vagelos Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Key takeaways

Virgil Percec belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Virgil Percec to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Virgil Percec from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Virgil Percec (born December 8, 1946) is a Romanian-American chemist and P. Roy Vagelos Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Expert in organic, macromolecular and supramolecular chemistry including self-assembly, biological membrane mimics, complex chiral systems, and catalysis. Pioneered the fields of liquid crystals with complex architecture, supramolecular dendrimers, Janus dendrimers and glycodendrimers, organic Frank-Kasper phases and quasicrystals, supramolecular polymers, helical chirality, Ni-catalyzed cross-coupling and multiple living and self-interrupted polymerizations. Most of these concepts were inspired by Nature and biological principles.

Life

Early life Percec was born in December 1946 in Siret, Romania. His father, Traian, was a schoolteacher and painter; his mother was named Virginia. Virgil attended Eudoxiu Hurmuzachi High School in Rădăuți.

Education Percec received his BS in Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry at the Polytechnic University in Iași in 1969 and his PhD in 1976 at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Iași where he had Cristofor Simionescu as a mentor. In 1981 he defected from his native country and after short postdoctoral stays at the University of Freiburg in Germany (July 1981 with H.-J. Cantow) and University of Akron, US (August 1981 to March 1982 with J. P. Kennedy) he joined the Department of Macromolecular Science of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, US in March 1982 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and to professor in 1986. In 1991 he became director of Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) and in 1993, he was awarded the Leonard Case Jr. Chair at CWRU. In 1999 he moved to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia as P. Roy Vagelos Chair and Professor of Chemistry. He has been repeatedly a visiting professor at the Universities of Freiburg, Ulm and at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz (all in Germany) and at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Personal life Percec and his wife, Simona, have a daughter Ivona Percec. She earned a double major in Molecular Biology and Medieval History from Princeton University and received an MD and PhD in Genetics from University of Pennsylvania, where she joined the faculty and surgery department.

Research Percec has made scientific contributions in diverse areas, including the discovery of all helical stereoisomers of polyphenylacetylene, their interconversion and intramolecular electrocyclization with applications in chiral separation, sensors, membranes, molecular machines, the discovery of liquid crystals based on conformational isomerism: polyethers, poly(vinyl ether)s, macrocyclics, covalent and supramolecular dendrimers the discovery of self-assembling dendrons, dendrimers and dendronized polymers; and the creation of helical rod-like and spherical viruses mimics. He generated the first organic Frank-Kasper phases and quasicrystals. He revealed double-helices disregarding chirality and deracemization in crystal state, designed the sequence-rearrangement concept to transform dynamic racemic (atactic) into homochiral (isotactic) supramolecular polymers and demonstrated acceleration of self-assembly and disassembly by fluorine and fluorous phase. His discovery of self-interrupted and self-accelerated iterative organic synthesis, polymerizations and living polymerizations produced the first monodisperse polymers by noniterative synthesis. More recently, he uncovered biological membrane mimics from Janus dendrimers, glycodendrimers and ionizable dendrimers; determined they self-assemble into monodisperse artificial cell-like mimics, co-assemble with bacterial and human cells, and generate one component mRNA delivery systems for virus vaccines and drugs. He is also known for the methodologies he developed for organic, macromolecular and supramolecular synthesis: replacement of Pd with Ni in cross-coupling reactions, the concepts of mixed-ligands and catalytic solvents, phase-transfer catalyzed living condensation polymerization, new mechanisms for living polymerization of acetylenes, single-electron-transfer mediated organic and polymerization reactions including living polymerizations. Percec discovered that the one-component multifunctional sequence-defined amphiphilic Janus dendrimer is an efficient delivery system for mRNA. Designed and synthesized several libraries containing sequence-defined multifunctional ionizable amphiphilic Janus dendrimer (IAJD) by an accelerated modular-orthogonal methodology. Demonstrated they co-assemble with mRNA into dendrimersome nanoparticles (DNPs) by a simple injection method rather than by the complex microfluidic technology. These sequence-defined IAJDs and DNPs are being employed to elucidate the mechanisms of encapsulation and release of mRNA from supramolecular virus-like assemblies and for the production of vaccines and drugs.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Virgil Percec

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Virgil Percec claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Virgil Percec before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Virgil Percec ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Virgil Percec

In research: Virgil Percec appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Virgil Percec in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Virgil Percec is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1946 births, 20th-century American chemists, 21st-century American chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Virgil Percec outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Virgil Percec in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Virgil Percec means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Virgil Percec out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Virgil Percec in simple terms?

Virgil Percec (born December 8, 1946) is a Romanian-American chemist and P. Roy Vagelos Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Why does Virgil Percec matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Virgil Percec?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Virgil Percec.