2025 R. B. King Lecture:
Sustainable Production of Reduced Phosphorus Compounds

This project seeks to invent novel chemical pathways from phosphate raw material inputs to value-added phosphorus chemicals of commercial importance. Traditionally, the phosphorus chemicals industry has utilized carbothermal reduction of mined phosphate rock in the production of white phosphorus as the starting point for all reduced phosphorus chemicals. This example of industrial redox malpractice needs to be replaced, and we are calling for the production of white phosphorus to be rendered obsolete. Trichlorosilane reduction of condensed phosphates represents a versatile white phosphorus alternative, while important classes of phosphorus(III) compounds such as phosphite, and phosphonic acids, can now be synthesized mechanochemically from condensed phosphates. The best of the new processes goes directly from condensed phosphates to value-added chemicals without needlessly traversing lower oxidation states. The new methods can utilize condensed phosphate inputs sourced from wastewater treatment. 

Christopher “Kit” Colin Cummins benefited from formative undergraduate research experiences carried out sequentially in the laboratories of Professors Susan E. Kegley, James P. Collman, and Peter T. Wolczanski, respectively of Middlebury College, Stanford University and Cornell University. He graduated from the latter institution with an A.B. degree in 1989. Following this he undertook inorganic chemistry graduate studies under the direction of Professor Richard R. Schrock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1993 with a thesis entitled “Synthetic Investigations Featuring Amidometallic Complexes”. Also in 1993 Kit joined the chemistry faculty at MIT as an Assistant Professor; in 1996 he was promoted to the rank of Professor, and in 2015 he was named the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry.