Woodward, Robert Burns (1917-1979)

US chemist who worked on synthesizing a large number of complex molecules. These included quinine in 1944, cholesterol in 1951, chlorophyll in 1960, and vitamin B₁₂ in 1971. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1965 for his work in organic synthesis.

Woodward was born in Boston and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked throughout his career at Harvard, becoming professor in 1950.

In 1947 Woodward worked out the structure of penicillin and two years later that of strychnine. In the early 1950s, he began to synthesize steroids, and in 1954 he synthesized the poisonous alkaloid strychnine and lysergic acid, the basis of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. In 1956 he made reserpine, the first of the tranquillizing drugs. Turning his attention again to antibiotics, he and his co-workers produced a tetracycline in 1962 and cephalosporin C in 1965. The synthesis of vitamin B12 was made in collaboration with Swiss chemists and took ten years.