Véronique Gouverneur among Royal Society award winners

Congratulations to Waynflete Professor of Chemistry, Véronique Gouverneur, who has been awarded the Davy medal in this year's Royal Society awards.

Professor Gouverneur is a pioneer in the field of fluorine chemistry, an area of research that directly benefits pharmaceutical drug development, medicine and imaging. In particular, she has transformed fluorine-based radiochemistry for applications in Positron Emission Tomography (PET), a molecular imaging technology used for disease diagnosis and drug development programmes.

Since natural fluoro-organic compounds are extremely rare, Professor Gouverneur has been instrumental in developing a ‘toolbox’ of (catalytic) reactions to generate structurally complex fluorine-substituted molecules. Many of the methods she developed are now routinely used, for instance to produce fluorine-labelled radiotracers. For diseases like cancer, this can facilitate personalised medicine as well as accelerate the discovery of new treatments.

Recently, Professor Gouverneur launched a new programme to develop sustainable methods to produce fluorochemicals at scale. A key breakthrough was her demonstration that the naturally-occurring mineral fluorite (fluorspar) can be directly converted into complex fluorochemicals without the usual production of toxic and highly dangerous hydrogen fluoride.

Professor Gouverneur said:

I am thrilled to receive the Davy medal for our contribution to fluorine chemistry for applications in medicine. Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated “the probable existence of fluorine as an analogue of chlorine”, so this specific recognition from my peers is very special to me. Fluorochemicals are essential in our daily life, and I am excited to see what developments unfold in the era of sustainability.