Woodward, Robert Bums

Woodward, Robert Bums (1956) Synthesis in A. Todd (ed.) Perspectives in Organic Chemistry, New York, Interscience Pubhshers, pp. 155—184. 

This proposal supported, with an earlier prediction of Sir Robert Robinson, that cholesterol was a cyclization product of squalene, a 30-carbon polymer of isoprene units. In 1953, Robert Bums Woodward and Bloch postulated a cyclization scheme for squalene (fig. 20.2) that was later shown to be correct. In 1956, the unknown isoprenoid precursor was identified as mevalonic acid by Karl Folkers and others at Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme Laboratories. The discovery of mevalonate provided the missing link in the basic outline of cholesterol biosynthesis. Since that time, the sequence and the stereochemical course for the biosynthesis of cholesterol have been defined in detail. 

M. E. Bowden and T. Benfey, Robert Bums Woodward and the Art of Organic Synthesis, Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, Philadelphia, PA, 1992. 

Peter J. T. Morris, Head of Research for the National Museum of Science Industry, London and Editor of Ambix, has written on many aspects of modem chemistry. He has published books on the history of synthetic mbber and polymers, modem chemical instrumentation and the work of Robert Bums Woodward. He has also published popular articles about the history of chemistry in... 

To aU my chemistry teachers and especially to Roderick Cyr, Wilmon B. Chipman, Thomas A. Spencer, Richard W. Franck, and Robert Bums Woodward. 

Benfey, Otto Theodor, and Morris, Peter J. T., eds. (2001). Robert Bums Woodward Architect and Artist in the World of Molecules. Philadelphia Chemical Heritage Foundation. 

A. Eschenmoser, RBW, Vitamin B12, and the Harvard-ETH Collaboration, in Robert Bums Woodward, Eds. O.T. Benfey, P.J.T. Morris, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, 2001. 

It is striking that Diels and Alder finally received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1950, more than two decades after their initial publication. The science of total synthesis of natural products was slow to advance and was hindered by World War II. These factors perhaps explain the delay in fuUy appreciating the impact of the Diels-Alder reaction. The modem era of total organic synthesis is generally considered to have started during the 1940s. In 1952, Robert Bums ( R. B. ) Woodward (1917-79) at Harvard would employ the Diels-Alder reaction to brilliant effect en route to total syntheses of the steroids cortisone and cholesterol. 

Scientist of the Decade Robert Bums Woodward (ipij-ip jp)... 

The theory of such reactions was put forward in 1969 by the American chemists Robert Bums Woodward (1917-79) and Roald Hoff-marm(1937- ), and is concerned with the way that orbitals of the reactants change continuously into orbitals of the products during reaction and with conservation of orbital symmetry during this process. See also... 

The position of longest wavelength absorption (Xmax) depends in a predictable way on the substitution pattern of these simple molecules. A set of empirical correlations was collated by Robert Bums Woodward (1917-1979) and was known initially as Woodward s rules and now sometimes as Woodward s first rules. These rules were extended by Louis Fieser (1899-1977) and Mary Fieser (1909-1997) to include cyclic dienes in the polycyclic compounds called steroids. Table 12.2 summarizes Woodward s and the Fiesers mles. Woodward s very different second set of rules will appear in Chapter 20. 

Robert Bums Woodward, to whom the book is dedicated, was one of the great masters of organic chemistry. He followed his early contribution to our understanding of the p-lactam stmcture of penicillin with... 

Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, akin to that of art, forms an essential distinction between chemistry and the other natural or historical sciences. This famous claim made in 1876 by the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot has been regularly cited by chemists throughout the twentieth century, notably by two Nobel laureates Robert Bums Woodward in 1956, and Jean-Marie Lehn in 1987. This phrase has continued to ring true for chemists for more than a century, despite the profound transformations undergone by the science. The aim of this chapter is, therefore, to try to understand what essential truth about modern chemistry is conveyed by the claim that chemistry creates its object, at least in the eyes of the chemists themselves. 

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