Herbert C. Brown

Herbert Charles Brown ( May 22nd 1912 as Herbert Brovarnik in London, † December 19, 2004 in West Lafayette ) was an American and British chemist.

Life

He was the son of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. The family moved in 1914 to the United States in the autumn of 1935 he began the study of chemistry at the University of Chicago and ended it in 1936 with the BS In the same year he participated in the US- American citizenship. On February 6, 1937, he married Sarah Baylen. A year later, in 1938, he received his doctorate at the University of Chicago for the Ph. D.. After a postdoctoral period he was for four years instructor at the same university. He then moved to the Wayne University as an Assistant Professor. In 1946 he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1947 and finally full professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana (USA). He held until his retirement in 1978 as professor emeritus until his death in this position. On 19 December 2004, he died of a heart attack at a hospital in Lafayette .. He left behind a son and a granddaughter.

Scientific performance

He received in 1979 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Georg Wittig. The prize was awarded for merits in the development of boron compounds to important reagents in organic synthesis. Brown discovered, most of the commonly used today reducing agent for aldehydes and ketones, such as sodium borohydride or lithium aluminum hydride. He also dealt with the addition of boranes to olefins.