Word: woodward
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...prime mover of life on eartn-is accompusned by chlorophyll, a strange, green substance whose molecule has a single atom of magnesium framed like a jewel in its center. Generations of chemists have tried to synthesize chlorophyll-and failed. But last week Harvard University announced that Professor Robert Burns Woodward, 43, already famed for synthesizing quinine, cortisone and strychnine, had turned the historic trick: he had built genuine chlorophyll-a, the kind that green plants use, out of simple, everyday chemicals...
...Woodward's starting point was aceto-acetic ester, a very ordinary chemical, which was then broken into four different compounds called pyrroles. Then followed what Woodward calls "tailoring the framework"-meaning that he and his 17 helpers devised subtle chemical tricks to put together the skeleton of the chlorophyll molecule and add the atom groups that clothe it. The final step, and one of the most difficult, was to separate chlorophyll-a (the real McCoy) from its mirror image, which was also produced by the synthesis...
...Woodward has made only a smidgen of chlorophyll-a.† It is authentic -but it cannot turn water and CO into sugar when exposed to sunlight. This is hardly surprising. In the green leaves of plants, chlorophyll occurs as thin plates stacked up to form laminated disks. This intricate structure and a lot of accessory chemicals seem to be needed for chlorophyll to do its job. But in his achievement, Harvard's Woodward has almost certainly taken a long stride toward explaining photosynthesis-one of nature's innermost and most important secrets...
...those who care to try it themselves, the first sentence of Woodward's seven-page description of the synthesis, as reported to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, reads: "2 -(β, β-Dicyanovinyl)-3, 5-dimethyl-4-ethylpyrrole was converted by sulfuryl chloride in acetic acid at 55° to 2-(β, β-dicyanovinyl)-3-methyl-4-ethyl-5-chloromethylpyrrole [m.p. 189-192°], and thence, by condensation with 3-carbethoxy-4-methylpyrrole in hot aqueous etha-nolic hydrochloric acid to 3', 4-dimethyl-3-ethyl-4'-carbethoxy-5-(β, β-dicyanovinyl) dipyrrylmethane...
...estate of Sportsman William Woodward Jr., shotgunned to death in 1955 when his wife Ann mistook him for a burglar, was disclosed in Manhattan to amount to $9,327,026. Costs of Woodward's funeral and administrative expenses lopped a whopping $1,030,840 off the gross estate. Ann Woodward, 43, and her two sons, William III, 15, and James, 11, each get the income from a third of the residuary estate. Ann, who has not remarried and largely abstains from the Manhattan social whirl these days, also got a cash bequest...