Herbert C. BrownBorn 22 May 1912; died 19 Dec 2004 at age 92. English-born American chemist who developed organoboranes (compounds of boron, carbon and hydrogen) which provided many new techniques in synthetic organic chemistry. For this accomplishment, he shared (with Georg Wittig) the 1979 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The versatility of organoboranes as reagents in reductions, additions and rearrangements provides new ways of linking carbon atoms to each other. Applications of organoboranes now include the manufacture of agricultural and pharmaceutical chemicals (such as the antidepressant Prozac). In graduate research during WW II, he discovered a method to produce sodium borohydride, giving a new approach to making hydrogen gas, used in weather balloons and later in fuel cells.« |
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