Nobel Award to Prelog

Home , Vladimir Prelog

96 Nature Vol. 258 November 13 [975 Nobel award to Prelog pROFESSOR Vladimir Prelog of the Federal Technical High School (ETH) in ZUrich has been awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, at the age of 69, for his work on stereochemistry. It comes to him not so much for anyone outstanding dis covery, but for a lifetime's work in chemistry which has produced a steady succession of significant researches combining deep thought and elegant experimental work. van't Hoff is con sidered as the founder of 'Chemistry in space'; Prelog has been the High Priest of this cult for the past 20 years. Prelog was born in 1906 in Sarajevo in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied in Prague, worked in industry, and then joined the staff of the Univer sity of Zagreb in Yugoslavia. For tunately for Prelog and for chemistry, ~ he found his way to Switzerland in"i:! 1941 and joined the great ETH School ~ of Organic Chemistry. His career in:§ Zurich was naturally influenced by his ] predecessor, Professor L. Ruzicka:> (Nobel Laureate, 1939), whom he suc ceeded in 1957. Prelog's structural and geometrical basis of stereochemistry. two detailed papers on compounds synthetic studies on natural products The Sequence Rule papers first showing axes and planes of pseudo have covered a wide range, including showed clearly and in a systematic assymetry, giving some experimental terpenes, steroids, alkaloids and anti framework of thought the nature of 'meat' to cover the elegant geometrical biotics. axes and planes of chirality. (The skeleton. The international group A major stereochemical interest term "chirality", borrowed from characteristically addressed by Prelog started from the preparative work of Kelvin, has been universally accepted in letters as Stereofreunde await with the ZUrich school on medium and as a convenient term for the property great interest and some impatience large rings, and developed into Prelog's of "handedness".) The need to test the the fuller story. studies on transannular reactions. In Sequence Rule exhaustively during its Much of Prelog's recent work has the spirit of his time, Prelog not only development caused Prelog to visualise, been on the borders of chemistry and made new compounds by ingenious and then to make with his students, biochemistry, including his studies on methods, but studied their physical organic compounds of widely differing ;:nzymatic reactions. In addition to properties and their reactivity, using types displaying stereoisomerism of their supreme biochemical importance, all of the steadily increasing range of kinds apparently unknown in nature, enzymatic reactions provide a suitable tools provided by physical chemistry. and hitherto unsuspected by organic terrain for thinking in terms of two His work in stereochemistry has in chemists--for example, cycloenan dimensional chirality. cluded a considerable share in the tiomers and cyclodiastereoisomers. Like many continental professors, study of conformations, for example, In all of this, Prelog has carried to Pre log has long had close connections his pioneer work on asymmetric syn its logical conclusion the concept of with industry, and he has been for thesis and the medium-ring work noted the tetrahedral atom (van't Hoff and some years a Director of Ciba-Geigy here. He delivered one of the earliest Le Bel). The marriage of chemistry in Basel. Centenary Lectures to the Chemical and geometry thus arranged by Prelog, He is a frequent and welcome visitor Society in London in 1949; this signi and called by him "chemical topology" to laboratories all over the world-and ficantly influenced the thinking of is already a happy and most fruitful nowhere more welcome than in the other pioneers of conformational one. All types of stereoisomerism can UK. Few chemists offer more stimulat studies. be derived from the consideration of ing discussion to co11egues of all ages Prelog's ability to get to the heart simplexes in two- and three-dimen and interests. He is always one of the of things is nowhere better illustrated sional space, alone or in combination. liveliest disputants at any meeting, and than in the work on the Sequence The general principles were outlined he was one of the founding fathers Rule. This work, the result of a very in lectures in Amsterdam, in Dublin, of the annual BUrgenstock Conferences fruitful partnership between Prelog, in Hamburg, and in ZUrich (Karrer on Stereochemistry. the late Sir Christopher Ingold and Dr Lecture), and were presented in a more The Stereofreunde rejoice in this R. S. Cahn, soon developed into some extended from in lectures at Cornell. award to Prelog. Perhaps the pilgrim thing much more than a method for Some of these ideas have now appeared age to Stockholm will usher in an age designating stereoisomers (the "R and in a very general paper modestly en of many-dimensional stereochemical S" system). It led Pre log to consider titled "Pseudoasymmetry in organic thinking. in a simple, but fundamental way, the chemistry", which was followed by w. Klyne