A celebration was held in Ponca City, Oklahoma for the 90th birthday of Charles Starks and his wife Virginia Starks. I (Marc Halpern) interviewed Dr. Starks in his home and he shared many interesting perspectives on the history of phase-transfer catalysis.
As many of you know, Dr. Starks is the inventor of the classical extraction mechanism that serves as the basis for understanding PTC applications and predicting the kinetics for most PTC reactions.
The interview was conducted in the Starks’ garden outdoors, so you will hear in the audio recording sounds of birds and insects. Please do not be distracted by these sounds.
Surprising fact disclosed in this interview: If scientists in the early 1960’s didn’t believe that the world would run out of food, Dr. Starks may not have embarked on the path to find an alternative to oils that served as the basis for soaps that may have been needed to feed people, that eventually led to the discovery of phase-transfer catalysis. The details are fascinating including the objections reviewers had to the original classical 1971 PTC publication.
Following are the intro and questions in this interview.
I have the amazing honor and privilege to be in Ponca City, OK to celebrate the 90th birthday of Dr. Charles Starks, the inventor of the extraction mechanism and the man who coined the term phase-transfer catalysis. Thank you for hosting me in your home.
I’m 70 years old and I fell in love with PTC 48 years ago, the moment I read your landmark publication 5 years after it was published in 1971. I want to thank you for your personal mentorship and more importantly I want to thank you on behalf of the scientific community for the immeasurable positive impact you made on achieving low-cost high-performance green chemistry for thousands of commercial processes.
I would like to ask a few questions for historical perspective.
- How did you come up with the extraction mechanism? Was it driven by your need to understand a specific reaction? Did it come to you in a dream? How did you figure it out?
- Did your bosses want to keep the extraction mechanism of PTC a secret or did they readily agree to patent it?
- Several years passed between your landmark initial publication of PTC and the issuance of your landmark broad scope patent in 1976. Do you recall the objections of the patent office?
- When you coined the term phase-transfer catalysis, how long did it take to realize that it would revolutionize cost reductions, environmental performance, process safety and other extraordinary benefits to the chemical industry?
- Today, PTC is being used in an amazingly wide array of segments of the chemical industry including polymers, monomers, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, petrochemicals, flavors & fragrances, dyes & pigments, solvents, explosives, medicine devices, surfactants and other commodity, specialty and fine organic chemicals? Do you recall which industries did PTC affect first and how it caught on?
- What were the barriers to faster and more widespread adoption of PTC? Resistance to change?
- Are you surprised that new PTC applications continue to be developed 53 years after you coined the term phase-transfer catalysis?
- What do you think was the biggest global impact of phase-transfer catalysis on the chemical industry and the world? Positive environmental impact through emissions reduction, reducing excess reactants, replacing hard to recover solvents such as DMSO? Safety by reducing hazardous materials such as phosgene, cyanide and hydrogen generation when producing alkoxides?
- You’re a humble man. How did the breakthrough discovery of PTC not go to your head?
- What did you enjoy more, achieving breakthroughs, managing people who achieved breakthroughs or something else?
- What was the #1 lesson you learned from your experiences from process chemist to senior executive in the chemical industry?
- What advice would you give to chemists starting their career?
As you know, PTC has been my full-time entrepreneurial business since 1995, soon to be 30 years.
When you and Charles Liotta accepted me as your junior collaborator in 1987, you totally changed my life for decades. There are no words to express the depth of gratitude I feel toward you and Charles Liotta for accepting me and mentoring me at the most crucial fork in my career path.
