Alfred Bader

Since then. Dr. Bader has continued to pursue his other long-time interest as an art collector and dealer. His autobiography has been published [Alfred Bader, Adventures of a Chemist Collector. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1995]. Our conversation was recorded in Dr. Bader s gallery and in the Baders home in Milwaukee on November 8, 1995 and Dr. Bader added a note in February 1998.  

I would like to ask you about your work in chemistry. Not only did you create the famous company Aldrich, found Aldrichimica Acta and build up a remarkable art collection, but you have also done a considerable amount of research in organic synthesis. 

I first became interested in research in my senior year as an undergraduate at Queen s University. There was a very good teacher, Professor Norman Jones, a famous spectroscopist. He allowed me to do a research project, which I enjoyed. Then I got a very fine job with a paint company in Montreal, and a year and a half later, the president of the company suggested that I go on with my studies and offered me company support. I did my Ph.D. studies at Harvard in 1947-49 with Louis Fieser, who traveled so much at that time that his students saw very little of him. But there were many able chemists, students and faculty, who were very helpful. 

Louis Fieser simply said to me, Here s a quinone in alkali it turns red, overnight it turns yellow. Find out what happens. A year and a half later, he come into my lab and asked me How is that project going I said I d solved it. Fieser said Give a seminar. He was satisfied, said, write it up for a paper, and there it was. So all went well, but I realized one thing I was not a world-class chemist. I was a very good experimentalist, but there were many things I didn t understand in theoretical chemistry. 

One day a salesman from Quaker Oats stopped by and said levulinic acid would soon be available very inexpensively from Quaker Oats. The moment I heard that, I made the bisphenol by reacting levulinic acid with phenol to make what is now called diphenolic acid. A few weeks later, I sent a note off to JACS. Soon Johnson Wax wanted to buy the patent for which we d applied. Our director of research asked me, What should we charge for this I said It was two days work if we got ten thousand dollars, we would be well paid, but they must want it very badly, so ask for a million Well, he got it. Then, of course, lawyers descended on my lab to make sure everything I worked on was really patented, but I had already seen to that. 

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Fallis A. G. 1998 Alfred Bader Award Lecture. Tangents and Targets the Synthetic Highway From Natural Products to Medicine Can. J. Chem. 1999 77 159-177... 

Dedicated to Dr. Alfred Bader on the occasion of his 70th birthday. 

Available from Alfred Bader Chemicals, Aldrich Chemical Company, Inc., 940 West St. Paul Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53233. Prior to use the compound should be purified on the vacuum line by fractional condensation at -45° (chlorobenzene slush) to eliminate any dimethylamine formed through possible exposure to atmospheric moisture. 

Aldrich, it s very simple. It used to be called the Alfred Bader Library... 

Fallis, A.G. 1998 Alfred Bader award lecture. Tangents and targets the synthetic highway from natural products to medicine. Can. J. Chem. 1999, 77, 159-177. 

CDP and OD-II were obtained from Alfred Bader Chemical Company and Eastman Chemicals, respectively. The synthesis of Co(III)(EDDA)(azodye) complexes was carried out by the air oxidation of an aqueous solution of 20 mM azodye and 20 mM Co(II)(EDDA)(I O) at pH 9.5. The CDP complex was isolated as previously described ( 5). The OD-II complex was purified by Sephadex LH-20 chromatography (2 ). The material was evaporated and dried in a drying pistol. Preparative TLC of Co(III)(EDDA)-(NA-MAT) proved successful (12). The complex was then rechromatographed on LH-20 equilibrated with 80 20, methanol water, evaporated, and dried. Chemical analyses (C,H,N) of the azoamino acid derivatives and the various Co(III) complexes were in good agreement with the calculated values. 

The author thanks Dr. Alfred Bader, founder of Aldrich Chemical Company and renowned art collector, for his interpretation (personal correspondence). The stylized letters on the chemist s garb evoke both Arabic and Hebrew. 

FIGURE 79. Black-and-white reproduction of the color photograph of the 1671 oil painting, The Alchemist, by Hendrick Heerschop, in the Collection of Isabel and Alfred Bader. See color plates. The author expresses his gratitude to Dr. Bader for permission to reproduce the image and also for his helpful discussion of the Bush drawing (see Figure 75). 

Figure 79 was executed by Hendrick Heerschop in 1671 and is titled The Alchemist. It is a black-and-white reproduction of a color photograph of a beautiful oil painting from the Isabel and Alfred Bader Collection. The alchemist appears to smoke his pipe while watching a distillation. Hopefully, he is not distilling diethyl ether. 

The author is grateful to Dr. Alfred Bader for making this photographic reproduction available and providing permission to reproduce it in black and white, as well as in color. 

The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) published in 2002 an attractive pamphlet titled Transmutations Alchemy in Art, Selected Works from the Eddleman and Fisher Collections at CHF. For decades, the beautiful catalogues of the then Aldrich Chemical Company featured artwork, particularly paintings of chemists by Dutch masters, collected by its founder, Alfred Bader. Bader s very noteworthy and dramatic autobiography is, fittingly enough, titled Adventures of a Chemist Collector (1995). 

Loschmidt, Konstitutions-Formein (1913/1989) Fleischhacker and Schonfeld, Pioneering Ideas (1997), esp. the historical papers by Alfred Bader, Christian Noe, Gunter Schiemenz, and Robert Rosner. 

The author wishes to thank Dr Alfred Bader, of the Aldrich Chemical Company, for personal support which allowed purchase of the computer and the software that have been used in modeling many of the compounds considered here. 

T. Phillips, Prussian blue, Alfred Bader Collection, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 1816. 

C. C. Leznoff, 1999 Alfred Bader Award Lecture. From early developments in multi-step organic synthesis on solid phases to multi-nuclear phthalocyanines Can. J. Chem. 2000, 78, 167-183. 

I wish to acknowledge many helpful discussions with Tony Cheetham, Morinobu Endo, Lawrence Dunne, Jon Hare, Wen-Kuang Hsu, Douglas Reid, Mauricio Terrones, Daniel Ugarte, David Walton. I also wish to thank the Royal Society, Alfred Bader, Peter Doyle (Zeneca) and EPSRC for support. 

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