Robert Burns Woodward
American organic chemist and Nobel laureate in synthesis.
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via Wikipedia: History of chemistry · see source
Robert Burns Woodward was an American organic chemist born April 10, 1917, who died July 8, 1979.[1] The 1965 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Woodward for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis.[2]
Life and work
In 1928 he contacted the German consulate in Boston to obtain copies of original German journal papers.[3] He entered MIT in 1933 but was excluded at the end of the 1934 fall term for neglecting formal studies.[4] MIT awarded him a doctorate one year later, with work on synthesizing the hormone estrone.[4] His doctoral advisors were James Flack Norris and Avery Adrian Morton.[5]
In the early 1950s Woodward and Geoffrey Wilkinson postulated a novel structure for ferrocene, beginning the field of transition metal organometallic chemistry.[6] Woodward died from a heart attack in his sleep in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while working on the synthesis of the antibiotic erythromycin.[7]
What the cited sources add
The Nobel Prize website states that the 1973 Chemistry prize was awarded jointly to Ernst Otto Fischer and Geoffrey Wilkinson for pioneering work on sandwich compounds.[8]
References
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Blout, "Robert Burns Woodward 1917–1979", Biographical Memoirs, 2001, p. 17 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1965", NobelPrize.org, 2026-08-18 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hlaford, "Remembering organic chemistry legend Robert Burns Woodward", Chemical & Engineering News, April 10, 2017 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1965 – Robert B. Woodward Biography Nobelprize.org; A synthetic attack on the oestrone problem PhD dissertation (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Greenberg, "James Flack Norris: His Early Contributions to Physical Organic Chemistry", 2015-01-01 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wilkinson, "The Structure of Iron Bis-Cyclopentadienyl", J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1952, p. 2125–2126; Federman Neto, "Ferrocene: 50 Years of Transition Metal Organometallic Chemistry — From Organic and Inorganic to Supramolecular Chemistry", ChemInform, 2004; "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1973", nobelprize.org (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Burns Woodward" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Blout, "Robert Burns Woodward 1917–1979", Biographical Memoirs, 2001, p. 17; Todd, "Robert Burns Woodward. 10 April 1917-8 July 1979", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1981, p. 628–695 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1973", nobelprize.org. facts only, no text reused. nobelprize.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Robert Burns Woodward (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
Also in the Codexery
More in Physicists And Chemists Of The 20Th Century
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Robert Burns Woodward (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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