Robert Burns Woodward

In 1938, Robert Woodward married Irja Pullman. The couple had two daughters: Siiri Anna and Jean Kirsten.

Later in 1946, Woodward married Eudoxia Muller, a chemistry researcher and an established artist. They had a daughter, Crystal Elisabeth and a son, Eric Richard Arthur. The marriage ended in a divorce in 1972.

Woodward was a heavy smoker and often lighted his second cigarette from the first. He slept very little and worked from noon till 3 AM in the morning.

Robert Burns Woodward was born on April 10, 1917, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Arthur Chester Woodward, died of influenza pandemic one year after his birth. Although his mother, Margaret (née Burns), remarried she was soon abandoned by her second husband. Thus, Robert was brought up singlehandedly by his mother.

He began his education at a public primary school. Later, he was admitted to Quincy High School, a public secondary school located in the suburbs of Boston. However, he was mostly an autodidact and read widely at home.

His thrust for knowledge was such that, in 1928, he procured chemistry journals from Verlag Chemie through the German Consul-General in Boston. Then by the age of fourteen, he bought Ludwig Gattermann’s Practical Methods of Organic Chemistry and performed all the experiments mentioned in the book on his own.

In 1933, Woodward entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here too, he neglected the formal study courses, concentrating only on chemistry. As a result, he was excluded from the 1934 fall semester.

Not wanting to lose such a bright student, James Flack Norris, an organic chemistry professor, intervened on his behalf. He made sure that Woodward would be allowed to sit for the examinations without attending classes. Accordingly, he was readmitted in the MIT in the fall semester of 1935.

In summer of 1937, Robert Burns Woodward began his career as a post doctoral fellow at the University of Illinois; but within six months, he shifted to the Harvard University as Junior Fellow. He remained with the Harvard University till his death in 1979.

His Fellowship ended in 1938. In the same year, he was accepted as a Member of the Society of Fellow. The position offered him freedom to pursue his research work independently. On the flip side, he needed collaborators to carry on his experiments, which the position did not allow.

Therefore in 1941, he accepted the position of the Instructor of Chemistry. Around this time, Woodworth published a few important papers on the correlation between ultraviolet spectra and structure. It later led to the formation of ‘Woodward’s Rules’.

However, it was not yet sure if he would have any long term engagement at Harvard and so he considered shifting to California Institute of Technology, Pasadena or University of California, Barkley. But, he did not have to make any such move; opportunity came from an unusual source.

In 1942, Edwin Land, the founder and head of the Polaroid Corporation, offered him the opportunity to work on quinine. It was a key ingredient for the production of their light polarizing sheets and films, but its supply was affected by the ongoing Second World War.

Synthesis of reserpine is taken as Woodward’s first major work. Earlier, the natural product was imported from India to be used as sedative. Synthesizing the product has not only made it more readily available, but has also brought in radical changes in the treatment of mental illness.

Synthesizing the complicated coenzyme Vitamin B-12 (cyanocobalamin) is another of his major work. Done in collaboration with Albert Eschenmoser of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, the work is taken as a landmark in the history of organic chemistry.