The Robert B. Woodward Collection

Robert Burns Woodward (1917-1979) was an American organic chemist and 1965 Nobel Prize winner. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts on April 10, 1917, Woodward earned his B.S. (1936) and Ph.D. (1937) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1937, following a short stint teaching at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he accepted a position at Harvard University’s Chemistry Department, where he remained for the rest of his life. At Harvard, he initially served as a Postdoctoral Fellow (1937-1938) and a Member of the Society of Fellows (1938-1941).

In 1941, Woodward joined the Harvard Chemistry Department faculty. He rose through the Chemistry Department’s ranks, serving as Instructor (1941-1944), Assistant Professor (1944-1946), Associate Professor (1946-1950), Professor (1950-1953), Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry (1953-1960), and Donner Professor of Science (1960-1979). In addition to his faculty duties, he also served as Director of the Woodward Research Institute in Basel, Switzerland.

Over the course of his scientific career, Woodward became a renowned specialist in the synthesis of organic substances. During the early 1940s, he employed ultraviolet spectroscopy to determine the molecular structures of natural products, including penicillin and strychnine. In 1944, Woodward and his post-doctoral researcher William von Eggers Doering became the first to synthesize quinine. In the early 1950s, Woodward and British chemist Geoffrey Wilkinson conducted research that led to the synthesis of ferrocene, which marked the beginning of the field of transition metal organometallic chemistry. By the mid-1960s, Woodward had successfully synthesized a number of other organic substances, including cortisone, strychnine, and chlorophyll. For his work in synthesizing complex organic substances, Woodward was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.

During the mid and late 1960s, Woodward worked with Polish-American chemist Roald Hoffman in developing the laws of the conservation of molecular orbital symmetry. Their work in this area, subsequently verified by many experiments, became known as the Woodward-Hoffman Rules. In 1972, Woodward and Swiss organic chemist Albert Eschenmoser succeeded in synthesizing Vitamin B12.

Robert B. Woodward authored numerous papers and journal articles over the course of his career. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he was the recipient of many other awards, including the National Medal of Science (1964) and the Royal Society’s Copley Medal (1978).

Robert B. Woodward died of a heart attack in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 8, 1979.

Sources

Papers of Robert Burns Woodward, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Robert B. Woodward Collection, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Nobel Prize. “Robert B. Woodward, Biographical.” https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1965/woodward/biographical/.