The Peter Anthony Leermakers Symposium

The Peter A. Leermakers Symposium was established in the memory of Professor Leermakers of the Wesleyan chemistry faculty, who died in 1971. In 1972 Professor of Chemistry Max Tishler established the symposium in Peter's honor and through his extensive contacts in the chemistry community was able to attract some of the premiere scientists in the world as speakers.

The Leermakers Symposium was an annual one day meeting held at Wesleyan in early May which focused on a single topic of current interest in chemistry. This annual symposium brought eminent chemists from Europe and the United States to Wesleyan for a day of intensive examination of a particular subject. The first symposium was held in 1972 on the chemistry of vitamin B12 and featured the late Robert B. Woodward, who reported on the just-completed total synthesis of this complex molecule. Since then topics have included natural biology, theoretical chemistry, extraterrestrial chemistry, and chemical reaction dynamics.