Albert Eschenmoser

Albert Eschenmoser
Born	August 5, 1925 Erstfeld, Switzerland
Residence	Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Fields	organic chemistry
Institutions	ETH Zurich
Alma mater	ETH Zurich
Doctoral advisor	Lavoslav Ružička
Known for	Eschenmoser's salt

Albert Eschenmoser (born August 5, 1925) is a Swiss chemist working at the ETH Zurich and The Scripps Research Institute.

His work together with Lavoslav Ružička on terpenes and the postulation of squalene cyclization to form lanosterol improved the insight into steroid biosynthesis.

In the early 1960s, Eschenmoser began work on what was the most complex natural product synthesized at the time - vitamin B₁₂. In a remarkable collaboration with his colleague Robert Burns Woodward in Harvard, a team of almost one hundred students and postdoctoral workers worked for many years on the synthesis of this molecule. The work was finally published in 1973, and it marked a landmark in the history of organic chemistry.

The Eschenmoser fragmentation, the Eschenmoser sulfide contraction and Eschenmoser's salt are named after him.

Awards

Eschenmoser was awarded the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry from The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [1].

References

• A. Eschenmoser, L. Ruzicka, O. Jeger, D. Arigoni (1955). "Zur Kenntnis der Triterpene. 190. Mitteilung. Eine stereochemische Interpretation der biogenetischen Isoprenregel bei den Triterpenen". Helvetica Chimica Acta 38 (7): pp.1890–1904. doi:10.1002/hlca.19550380728.  (German)

• Erik J. Sorensen (2000). "Albert Eschenmoser". Helvetica Chimica Acta 83 (8): 1673–1677. doi:10.1002/1522-2675(20000809)83:8<1673::AID-HLCA1673>3.0.CO;2-I. 

External links

• An interview with Albert Eschenmoser at The Scripps Research Institute
• Albert Eschenmoser, MSU Gallery of Chemists' Photo-Portraits and Mini-Biographies