Elias James Corey encyclopedia topics

Elias James Corey - 2 reference results

Elias James Corey (born July 12, 1928) is an American organic chemist. In 1990 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis", specifically retrosynthetic analysis. Regarded by many as one of the greatest living chemists, he has developed numerous synthetic reagents, methodologies, and has advanced the science of organic synthesis considerably. He was awarded the Japan Prize in 1989.

Biography

He was born to Christian Lebanese immigrants in Methuen, Massachusetts, 30 miles north of Boston. His mother changed his name to "Elias" to honor his father who died eighteen months after the birth of his son. His widowed mother, brother, two sisters and an aunt and uncle all lived together in a spacious house- struggling through the depression. He attended Catholic elementary school and Lawrence public High School.

At MIT, he earned both a bachelor's degree in 1948 and a Ph.D. in 1951. Both degrees were in chemistry. Immediately thereafter, he joined the faculty of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1959, he moved to Harvard University, where he is currently an emeritus professor of organic chemistry. He was awarded the American Chemical Society's greatest honor, the Priestley Medal, in 2004.

Major contributions

Reagents

He has developed several new synthetic reagents:

PCC (pyridinium chlorochromate), and PDC (pyridinium dichromate): widely used for the oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes.
t-Butyldimethylsilyl ether (TBDMS), Triisopropylsilyl ether (TIPS), and Methoxyethoxymethyl (MEM): popular alcohol protecting groups.

Methodology

Several reactions developed in the E.J. Corey labs have become commonplace in modern synthetic organic chemistry. Several reactions have been named after him:

Corey-Bakshi-Shibata reduction (CBS reduction): Asymmetric ketone reduction.
Corey-Fuchs reaction
Corey-Kim oxidation
Corey-Winter olefin synthesis
Corey-House-Posner-Whitesides reaction
Johnson-Corey-Chaykovsky reaction

Total syntheses

E. J. Corey and his research group have completed many total syntheses. His 1969 total syntheses of several prostaglandins are considered classics.

Other notable syntheses:

Graduate student suicides

Between 1980 and 1998 there were eight graduate-student suicides at Harvard University, half of them happened in the chemistry department, and three of those were suicides of students supervised by Prof. Corey.

The three suicidal students were:

Felix Chau (died 1987), third-year student supervised by Corey.
Fung Lam (died 1997), in his sixth month at Harvard. Changed supervisors to Corey ten days before his suicide.
Jason Altom (died 1998), Ph.D. student supervised by Corey.

Corey was about 70 years old at the time of the last two suicides. Altom's suicide caused controversy because he explicitly blamed the advisor (Corey) for his problems. Altom died by taking potassium cyanide in 1998, citing in his farewell note "abusive research supervisors" as one reason for taking his life. Altom's suicide note had been described as a "policy paper," because it contained explicit instructions on how to reform the relationship between students and their supervisors.

Woodward-Hoffmann rules

Recently when awarded the Priestley Medal, E. J. Corey has controversially claimed to have inspired Robert Burns Woodward prior to the development of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. This was rebutted by Roald Hoffmann in the journal Angewandte Chemie.