He received an A.P. Sloan Fellowship in 1973 and spent 1973-74 working with professor E.O. Fischer at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. He spent the Fall of 1985 on sabbatical at Princeton University and the Fall of 1990 on sabbatical at Stanford University. New Synthetic Methods Using Highly Reactive Metal Powders Research projects in Dr. Rieke's program are in the areas of organic and organometallic chemistry and the preparation and study of highly reactive metal powders. A new approach to the generation of highly recatice metals was discovered in his laboratories. Using this method, several metal poweders have been prepared which exhibit far superior chemical reactivity to that reported in the literature.
Current studies are underway to develop new routes to heterocyclic systems.
Highly reactive zinc has allowed the preparation of novel organozinc reagents and several new synthetic methods. New areas of study include highly reactive Ba, Sr, Mn, Sm, and Ca.