Bernard L. Shaw

Bernard Leslie Shaw, BSc, PhD, FRS is an English chemist who has made notable contributions to organometallic chemistry. He is Emeritus Professor of Inorganic and Structural Chemistry at the University of Leeds.

Together with his longtime collaborator Joseph Chatt, Shaw contributed to the development of organoplatinum chemistry. They reported the first platinum hydride, PtHCl(PEt₃)₂. This colourless, volatile solid was the first non-organometallic hydride (i.e., lacking a metal-carbon bond).

With an interest in cyclometallation, he discovered one of the first pincer complexes via the orthometalation of 1,3-C₆H₄(CH₂PBu^t₂)₂.

Pincer complex prepared by Shaw et al.

• He was awarded a Tilden Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1974
• He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1978.