John Scott Award Goes to Recent Nobelist

To say that K. Barry Sharpless has had an eventful year might be as understated as saying that he likes chemistry. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Dec. 10, Sharpless, W.M. Keck Professor of chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., returned to his hometown of Philadelphia earlier in April to receive the Benjamin Franklin Medal, and then again this autumn to receive the John Scott Award. The latter award was bestowed by the Philadelphia Board of Ci

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Sharpless pegs the beginnings of his inquisitive nature that spirited his prize-winning research on the long summer days spent at the New Jersey shore fishing or seining for crabs. Be it snapping turtle, eel, or even coelacanth, Sharpless always hoped for a new and outlandish catch, and today he continues to look for new reactivity and conduct chemistry the way he used to fish.1 His research on chirally-catalyzed oxidation reactions is no fish story, however.

Chiral molecules or enantiomers are mirror-image molecules having identical compositions but a three-dimensional structure as different as your right and left hands. Sorting such molecules or selectively producing one structure over another had proven a difficult challenge for pharmaceutical companies, but crucial to overcome considering the nature of such distinctions. Tuberculosis fighting ethambutol, for example, has a mirror image twin that causes blindness.

Working with such people as Bob Michaelson at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

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