Robert B. Woodward

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Robert Burns Woodward (born April 10, 1917 in Boston , Massachusetts , USA , † July 8, 1979 in Cambridge , Mass.) Was an American chemist ( organic chemistry ). In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry .

Robert B. Woodward, Cambridge (Mass) 1965

Life

Woodward was born in Boston in 1917 as the only child of the English immigrant Arthur Woodward and the native Scottish Margarett Burns. In 1938 he married Irja Pullman, with whom he had two daughters. From his second marriage (from 1946) to Eudoxia Muller, a technician whom he met at Polaroid, a son and a daughter were born.

Scientific career

Woodward developed his first quinine synthesis at the age of 12. From 1933 to 1937 he studied chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge / Massachusetts, where he completed his doctorate in 1937 (at the age of 20) . He then worked briefly at the University of Illinois. In the same year he moved to Harvard University ; initially as a postdoc and from 1944 assistant professor. In 1950 he became a full professor there and stayed there until the end of his life. Since 1963 he has also headed the Woodward Research Institute in Basel , Switzerland, financed by Ciba-Geigy AG .

Scientific importance

Woodward was one of the most important natural product synthesizers of the 20th century. Woodward was the first chemist to systematically use physical methods such as UV and IR spectroscopy to determine the structure of organic compounds . Another significant achievement was the application of electron theory to reaction mechanisms to solve structural and synthetic problems.

Very complex natural product syntheses of organic molecules were still uncharted territory at that time. Based on his excellent syntheses of natural products between 1937 and 1950, many other scientists followed and expanded this area. He planned his syntheses very carefully, making special use of the stereochemical and spatial configuration of the molecules and the protective groups used, as one of the first US chemists . He recognized the advantages of the Diels-Alder reaction for stereoselective syntheses (e.g. reserpine , oestrone ) as well as the importance of the Claisen rearrangement , and in 1965 he and his colleague Roald Hoffmann developed the Woodward-Hoffmann rules , the explain the stereochemistry of the products of certain organic reactions . For this work Hoffmann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1981.

In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the synthesis of natural products . Among other things, he did research on antibiotics and developed total syntheses of quinine , cholesterol , cortisone and other steroids (the first total synthesis of a non-aromatic steroid around the same time as Robert Robinson in England), strychnine , lysergic acid , reserpine , chlorophyll , colchicine , oestrone , tetracycline , Erythromycin , prostaglandin , cephalosporin and, together with Albert Eschenmoser, vitamin B12 between 1960 and 1972 .

Many of Robert B. Woodward's undergraduates have held influential academic positions around the world.

Honors and memberships

Woodward has received numerous honorary doctorates , honorary memberships and prizes for his scientific work , including the 1965 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 1978 Copley Medal of the Royal Society . He received the first Robert Robinson Award in 1964 . In 1964 he received the National Medal of Science , 1968 the Lavoisier Medal of the French Chemical Society, 1973 the Arthur C. Cope Award and 1959 the Davy Medal . In 1970 he was awarded the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun .

Woodward was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948, to the National Academy of Sciences in 1953, and to the American Philosophical Society in 1962 . In addition, he was elected a member of the Leopoldina in 1968, he was a member of the Académie des Sciences , the Russian Academy of Sciences , foreign member of the Royal Society and honorary member ( Honorary Fellow ) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

The Woodward reagent K is named after him.

Trivia

Woodward was known for the fact that his lectures could easily last three or four hours, and his seminars often lasted late into the night. In the lecture he used colored chalk in many colors and he was a chain smoker there too.

literature

  • Jerome Berson : Chemical Creativity - Ideas from the Work of Woodward, Hückel, Meerwein, and Others. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 1999, ISBN 978-3-527-29754-2 .
  • Desmond MS Wheeler: RB Woodward and modern organic chemistry, Chemistry in Our Time , Volume 18, 1984, No. 4, pp. 109-119, ISSN  0009-2851 .
  • George B. Kauffman: Robert B. Woodward: Organic Synthesizer par excellence - On the 25th Anniversary of His Death , Chem. Educator, Volume 9, 2004, pp. 1-5.
  • Otto Theodor Benfey, Peter JT Morris (eds.): Robert Burns Woodward: architect and artist in the world of molecules , Chemical Heritage Foundation 2001
  • Derek Barton (Ed.): RB Woodward remembered: A Collection of Papers in Honor of Robert Burns Woodward, 1917–1979 , Pergamon Press 1982

Web links

Commons : Robert Burns Woodward  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Winfried R. Pötsch, Annelore Fischer and Wolfgang Müller with the collaboration of Heinz Cassebaum : Lexicon of important chemists . Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1988, p. 462, ISBN 3-323-00185-0 .
  2. ^ G. Wayne Craig: The Woodward Research Institute, Robert Burns Woodward (1917-1979) and Chemistry behind the Glass Door , Helvetica Chimica Acta 94 ( 2011 ) 923-946, doi: 10.1002 / hlca.201100077 .
  3. ^ RB Woodward, R. Hoffmann: Stereochemistry of Electrocyclic Reactions , Journal of the American Chemical Society, Volume 87, 1965, pp. 395-397.
  4. ^ RB Woodward, R. Hoffmann: The Conservation of Orbital Symmetry , Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Vol. 8, 1969, pp. 781-853.
  5. ↑ RB Woodward, WE Doering, The total synthesis of quinine J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 66 1944, p. 849.
  6. ↑ RB Woodward, F. Sondheimer, D. Taub: The total synthesis of cholesterol J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 73, 1951, p. 3548
  7. ↑ RB Woodward, F. Sondheimer, D. Taub: The total synthesis of cortisone J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 73, 1951, p. 4057.
  8. ^ RB Woodward, Franz Sondheimer , David Taub, Karl Heusler, WM McLamore: The Total Synthesis of Steroids J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 74, 1952, pp. 4223-4251.
  9. ↑ In simpler aromatic steroids first succeeded 1939, the total synthesis of equilenin by WE Bachmann (Soc J. Am. Chem., Vol. 61, p 974), W. Cole, AL Wilds, and 1948 estrone by G. Anner and Karl Miescher (Experientia, Vol. 4, p. 25).
  10. ↑ RB Woodward, MP Cava, WD Ollis, A. Hunger, HU Daniker, K. Schenker: The total synthesis of strychnine , J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 76, 1954, pp. 4749-51.
  11. ↑ RB Woodward, FE Bader, H. Bickel, AJ Frey, RW Kierstead: The total synthesis of reserpine , J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 78, 1956, pp. 2023-2025.
  12. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter W. (PDF; 852 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved February 17, 2018 .
  13. ^ Member History: Robert B. Woodward. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 18, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Woodward, Robert B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woodward, Robert Burns (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1965
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts , United States
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1979
Place of death Cambridge , Massachusetts , United States