Elias James Corey

He married Claire Higham in September 1961 and is blessed with three children.

His eldest son David, born in 1963, is a ‘Harvard University’ graduate and a PhD holder from ‘University of California’, Berkeley. David is presently associated with University of California Medical School at San Francisco as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry/Molecular Biology.

John, his second son, born in 1965, is also a graduate from ‘Harvard University’ and is presently pursuing advanced studies in classical music composition at the ‘Conservatoire de Paris’.

He was born on July 12, 1928, in Methuen, Massachusetts, United States, to Christian Lebanese immigrants Elias Corey and his wife Fatina Hasham Corey. His name was changed by his mother to Elias after his father, who passed away when he was a toddler of 18 months.

He was raised in a spacious house in a family that consisted of his mother, uncle, aunt, brother and two sisters. He studied in a Catholic elementary school and thereafter at the ‘Lawrence High School’ in Massachusetts. He was quite a sports enthusiast as a young boy and played football, baseball and did hiking.

Corey joined ‘Massachusetts Institute of Technology’ (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 16 and obtained BS in Organic Chemistry in 1948.

Accepting an invitation of Professor John C. Sheehan, a distinguished American organic chemist, he stayed back at ‘MIT’ to pursue his postgraduate doctoral studies. In 1951 he earned PhD in Chemistry from the institute under the guidance of Professor Sheehan.

Starting from 1950 the Corey group lab, which have become a conventional place of research and development associated with the field of modern synthetic organic chemistry, have developed around 300 procedures.

In 1951 he was inducted as a teacher of Organic Chemistry at the ‘University of Illinois’ at Urbana-Champaign. His career advanced in the university and he became a full Professor of Chemistry at the university in 1956 and served the position till 1959. Meanwhile in 1952 he was inducted as a Zeta Chapter member of ‘Alpha Chi Sigma’ at the university.

During his tenure at the ‘University of Illinois’ he initiated his research on synthesis and structure of substances.

He developed a number of new synthetic reactions. Among these were pyridinium chlorochromate (PCC) also referred as Corey-Suggs reagent. It is applied widely for alcohol oxidation to corresponding aldehydes and ketones.

His development of popular alcohol protecting groups like methoxyethoxymethyl (MEM), triisopropylsilyl ether (TIPS) and t-Butyldimethylsilyl ether (TBS) made synthesis of numerous natural products possible that are devoid of the functional group compatibility to endure standard chemical alterations.