Call Number:

101

Repository:

Science History Institute Archives

Extent:

1 linear feet (1 folder)

Language Note:

Text in English.

Preferred Citation:

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

Date:

1959-1979 (inclusive) and 1962-1965 (bulk)

Creator:

Wasserman, Harry H. and Hoffmann, Roald

Form:

Archival materials

Abstract:

This is a small collection of 19 reprints by Robert Burns Woodward and various colleagues. A key piece of the collection is the set of three communications co-authored with Roald Hoffmann that came to be known as the Woodward-Hoffmann Rules and resulted in a Nobel Prize for the Roald Hoffmann.

Robert Burns Woodward was born in Boston, MA on April 10, 1917. He attended M.I.T. His specialty was organic synthesis and he did breakthrough work in the field. He was the 1964 recipient of the National Medal of Science. His greatest achievements are probably the formulation (with Roald Hoffmann) of the Woodward-Hoffmann Rules which solved longstanding problems regarding chemical structure, which won the 1965 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and his synthesis (working with Albert Eschenmoser and a team of scientists) of vitamin B-12 published in 1973. He died at Cambridge, MA on July 8, 1979. Woodward won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.

For a more detailed inventory, please view this record in our library catalog: https://othmerlib.sciencehistory.org/record=b1064638~S6

The collection concerns itself with the latter portion of Woodward's career. In addition to the reprints there is a biographical sketch of Woodward by Harvard University colleague Harry N. Wasserman and a menu from a dinner held to commemorate the synthesis of vitamin B-12, signed by many of Woodward's colleagues.