11 Facts About Louis Fieser

Louis Frederick Fieser was an American organic chemist, professor, and in 1968, professor emeritus at Harvard University.

Louis Fieser's award-winning research included work on blood-clotting agents including the first synthesis of vitamin K, synthesis and screening of quinones as antimalarial drugs, work with steroids leading to the synthesis of cortisone, and study of the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Louis Fieser invented militarily effective napalm while at Harvard in 1942.

Louis Fieser was an editor and contributor for Organic Syntheses.

At Harvard University, Louis Fieser was a well-loved faculty member widely known for using inventive methods to educate his students, such as demonstrating "How NOT to Perform a Recrystallization".

Louis Fieser even produced a $28,000 educational film to supplement his organic chemistry lecture.

Louis Fieser's reagent is a mixture of chromium trioxide in acetic acid.

Louis Fieser was the first to propose the existence of iceane.

In 1939 Louis Fieser was involved in a competitive race for the structure elucidation of Vitamin K and he was able to report its synthesis in the end of that year.

Louis Fieser was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1933, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1940, and the American Philosophical Society in 1941.

Louis Fieser was a chain smoker, and only after he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1965 and recovered did he quit the habit and start to actively promote the committee's conclusions.