William H. Pirkle
William H. Pirkle (born May 2, 1934 in Shreveport , Louisiana - † April 6, 2018 in Champaign (Illinois) ) was an American chemist ( organic chemistry , analytical chemistry ) and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . He is considered the founder of chiral high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The separation of chiral molecules is important in biologically important applications and in pharmaceuticals since usually only one enantiomer is biologically active.
Pirkle grew up on a farm and, as a teenager, built model airplanes with which he took part in competitions. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1959 and received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Rochester in 1963 with Marshall D. Gates . As a post-doctoral student he was with Elias J. Corey at Harvard as a Fellow of the National Science Foundation . From 1964 he was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, with a full professorship from 1980.
In 1966 he demonstrated the possibility of differentiating enantiomers using NMR in the presence of chiral solvents. He used an anthracene derivative of trifluoroethanol for this. In the 1970s he researched chiral stationary phases (CSP) in HPLC column chromatography (from 1979 onwards, adding amino acids to the columns) and in 1981 these became commercially available (Pirkle columns). Thereafter, chromatography became the preferred method of determining enantiomeric purity.
Another pioneer in chiral chromatography was LeRoy H. Klemm (1919–2003), who in 1960 applied chiral compounds to the silica surfaces of columns. Instead of amino acids, Yoshio Okamoto (* 1941) used carbohydrates in Japan and Wadim Dawankow (* 1937) in Russia used metal complexes with amino acids. Ernst Klesper used supercritical fluids as solvents.
In 2004 he received the American Chemical Society's Award in Separations Science and Technology . In 1971/72 he was a Sloan Research Fellow . In 1998 he received the Robert Boyle Prize for Analytical Science .
Web links
- Linda Wang, Obituary in Chemistry and Engineering News , Volume 96, Issue 28, July 6, 2018
- Website at the University of Illinois
Individual evidence
- ↑ Date of birth American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
- ↑ Derek Lowe, Das Chemiebuch, Librero 2017, p. 396
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pirkle, William H. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 2, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Shreveport |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 6, 2018 |
| Place of death | Champaign (Illinois) |