Eugene van Tamelen

Eugene Earle van Tamelen ( born July 20, 1925 in Zeeland ( Michigan), † December 12, 2009 in Los Altos ( California)) was an American chemist.

Biography

Van Tamelen first began to become automotive designers a design study at Hope College in Holland (Michigan ). However, he decided after a course in organic chemistry to begin a study of chemistry, which he at Hope College graduating in 1947. While still a student he wrote a technical paper entitled "The Malonic Ester Reaction With 1-halo -nitro paraffin " in the Journal of the American Chemical Society ( JACS ). In 1950 he earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University.

Subsequently, he was lecturer at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Wisconsin. In 1962 he accepted an appointment as professor of chemistry at Stanford University, where he worked until his retirement in 1987. During his teaching and research, he has published more than 150 other papers in JACS. His research interests included the study of the body's production of cholesterol. He explored the molecule squalene oxide, which was a crucial component in a complex reaction which creates a maze of interconnected carbon rings in the core of Cholesterolmolekülen. In addition, he succeeded in 1963, the artificial production of pure Dewar benzene.

Among his students there was also the later Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, Barry Sharpless.

For his services he was appointed a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Eric Jacobsen, Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, praised him as " organic chemist but made really big questions that exceeded the specific discipline of organic chemistry, and as one of the first people to the studied what we call the biomimetic approach to the synthesis. Tamelens Van exploration of squalene oxide yielded an amazing discovery, which laid the basis for a number of insights into the chemistry and pharmaceuticals. "