Véronique Gouverneur

Gouverneur obtained her undergraduate degree (a master's degree in chemistry),[3] and then in 1991 her doctorate, from the Université catholique de Louvain.[4] She moved in 1992 to the Scripps Research Institute in the US, returning to Europe in 1994.[4] She accepted a position of Maître de Conférence at Louis Pasteur University, working with Charles Mioskowski and was associate member of the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires.[7]

She joined the department of chemistry at Oxford in 1998, becoming reader in 2006[8] and professor in 2008.[4] In her research career, she chose fluorine chemistry as a distinctive area to focus on because fluorine compounds have many applications, including in pharmaceutical drugs and in positron emission tomography (PET) scans.[6] She has also had visiting professor posts at the University of Paris X and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry.[9] In 2022, she was appointed as the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry, a post that dates back to 1865.[10][11]

Gouverneur won the AstraZeneca Research Award for organic chemistry in 2005.[8] She was the 2008 winner of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Bader Award, "for her important contributions to synthetic organofluorine chemistry."[12] In 2010, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry[13] and received the IUPAC Distinguished Woman in Chemistry Award.[14] In 2011 she was awarded the Liebig Lectureship Award of the Organic Division of the German Chemical Society.[15] In 2012, she was holding the Blaise Pascal Chair (ENS/CEA, France).[16][17] In 2013, the UK's Royal Society selected her as one of 27 Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders.[18] In 2015, Gouverneur received the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry "for her contribution to late-stage fluorination and for invigorating creatively the field of [¹⁸F] radiochemistry for applications in Positron Emission Tomography."[19] In 2016, she was an International Visiting Research Scholar of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (University of British Columbia)[20] and held the Tetrahedron Chair at the Belgian Organic Synthesis Symposium (BOSS) meeting.[21] That year, she received the RSC Tilden Prize for her interdisciplinary work in the area of organofluorine chemistry and radiochemistry, and the impact of her discoveries in medicine.[22][23]

In 2017, Gouverneur become an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC).[24] She received a European Research Council Advanced Grant in 2018.[25] In 2019, she received the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award[26] and the Prelog Medal (ETH).[27] In the same year, she was the president of the Bürgenstock Conference—the Swiss Chemical Society conference on stereochemistry[28]—and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019.[29] In 2021, she was awarded the Henri Moissan International Prize for her work in fluorine chemistry. In 2022, she received the Arthur C. Cope Award conferred by the American Chemical Society[30] and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[31] In 2022, she also received the European Chemical Society's award for Female Organic Chemist of the Year.[11]