Robert Robinson

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Robert Robinson

Sir Robert Robinson (born September 13, 1886 in Rufford , Derbyshire , † February 8, 1975 in Great Missenden , Buckinghamshire ) was a British chemist . In 1947 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his research on biologically important plant products, especially alkaloids ”.

life and work

Robinson was the son of a textile manufacturer and studied chemistry at Manchester University after attending school near Leeds , where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1906 and received his doctorate in 1910 under William Henry Perkin junior (D. Sc.). In 1912 he became professor of organic chemistry at the University of Sydney and from 1915 he was a professor at the University of Liverpool . In 1920 he became director of research at the British Dyestuffs Corporation. In 1921 he became a professor at St. Andrews University and in 1922 at Manchester University. In 1928 he moved to the University of London and from 1930 he was Waynflete Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University , where he stayed for the rest of his career. From 1955 he was Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College. He became director of Shell Chemical Company in 1955 and was its scientific advisor.

Robinson was on numerous state committees, for example as envoy of Great Britain at the first UNESCO conference in 1947.

In 1920 Robinson was elected as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society , which in 1930 the Davy Medal , 1932 the Royal Medal and 1942 the Copley Medal awarded him. 1945 to 1950 he was President of the Royal Society. In 1939 he was knighted . In 1949 he was awarded the Order of Merit . He was a multiple honorary doctor and Knight of the Legion of Honor in France. He received the Longstaff, Faraday, and Flintoff Medals from the Chemical Society, the US Medal of Freedom, and the Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute . He was also a member of numerous foreign academies.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry and from 1939 to 1941 President of the Chemical Society, whose biennial Robinson Lectures, introduced in 1962, are named after him. In 1958 he became President of the Society for the Chemical Industry and in 1955 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science .

In his honor is Robert Robinson Award for Organic Chemistry at the Royal Society of Chemistry named. In 1941 he received the first Paracelsus Medal from the Swiss Chemical Society.

plant

Robinson is known both for the elucidation of the structures of natural products in organic chemistry and for his syntheses, and he made important contributions to the electron theory of organic compounds.

In the 1920s he clarified the structure of plant dyes such as anthocyanins and of alkaloids such as morphine , papaverine , narcotine , strychnine and brucine .

Various reactions in organic chemistry bear his name: the Robinson annulation of polycyclic compounds, the Robinson-Gabriel synthesis for oxazoles and the Robinson-Schöpf synthesis of tropinone , the Allan-Robinson reaction (preparation of flavones or isoflavones by condensation of o-hydroxyaryl ketones with anhydrides of aromatic carboxylic acids) and many others. He achieved some total syntheses in steroids ( cholesterol , cortisone , epi- androsterone ). The first total synthesis of a non-aromatic steroid (epi-androsterone and other steroids derived from it) was achieved by his group, to which his student John W. Cornforth belonged, in 1951 (in competition with and around the same time as Robert B. Woodward in the USA). During World War II he led a penicillin synthesis team in Oxford.

Private

Robinson was a passionate mountaineer in his youth. Since 1912 he was married to Gertrude Maude Walsh (1886-1954), who was also a chemist and with whom he worked (for example on the Piloty-Robinson pyrrole synthesis ). With her he had a son and a daughter. After her death in 1954, he married the American Stearn Sylvia Hillstrom in 1957.

Chess player

Robinson was also a strong correspondence chess player. He took part in the correspondence chess Olympiad in the mid-1940s . In 1946 he was proposed as President of the World Correspondence Chess Federation ICCA . Because of a lack of time, he let BH Wood go first.

Memberships

Robinson was admitted to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1928 and to the Leopoldina in 1933 . In 1930 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . Since 1947 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and since 1966 a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR . In 1934 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1948 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In simpler aromatic steroids first succeeded 1939, the total synthesis of equilenin by WE Bachmann , W. Cole, AL Wilds (J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol 61, 974), and 1948 estrone by G. Anner and Karl Miescher (Experientia , Volume 4, p. 25).
  2. ↑ HME Cardwell, JW Cornforth, SR Duff, H. Holtermann, R. Robinson, Chem. Ind., London, 1951, p. 389, J. Chem. Soc., London, 1953, p. 361
  3. ↑ Member entry of Sir Robert Robinson (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on February 10, 2016.
  4. ↑ Member entry of Sir Robert Robinson (with picture) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 10, 2016.
  5. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 3, 2020 .
  6. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Robert Robinson. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 20, 2015 .
  7. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved October 11, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Robinson, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Rufford , Derbyshire
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1975
Place of death Great Missenden , Buckinghamshire