30 Facts About Vladimir Prelog

Vladimir Prelog was a Croatian-Swiss organic chemist who received the 1975 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions.

Vladimir Prelog lived and worked in Prague, Zagreb and Zurich during his lifetime.

Vladimir Prelog's father, Milan, a native of Zagreb, was a history professor at a gymnasium in Sarajevo and later at the University of Zagreb.

Vladimir Prelog attended elementary school in Sarajevo, but in 1915, as a child, Vladimir Prelog moved to Zagreb with his parents.

Vladimir Prelog spent two years in Osijek gymnasium, where he became interested in chemistry under the influence of his professor Ivan Kuria.

Vladimir Prelog completed his high school education in Zagreb in 1924.

Vladimir Prelog's teacher was Emil Votocek, while his assistant and mentor Rudolf Lukes introduced him to the world of organic chemistry.

Vladimir Prelog was in charge of the production of rare chemicals that were not commercially available at that time.

Vladimir Prelog performed research in his spare time, investigating alkaloids in cacao bark.

Vladimir Prelog wanted to work in an academic environment, so he accepted the position of lecturer at the University of Zagreb in 1935.

Vladimir Prelog was financially supported by the pharmaceutical factory "Kastel", currently Pliva.

Vladimir Prelog developed a financially successful method of producing Streptazol, one of the first commercial sulfonamides.

In 1941, while at Zagreb, Vladimir Prelog developed the first synthesis of adamantane, a hydrocarbon with an unusual structure that was isolated from Moravian oil fields.

In 1941, in the midst of World War II, Vladimir Prelog was invited to lecture in Germany by Richard Kuhn.

Shortly afterwards, Lavoslav Ruzicka, whom Vladimir Prelog asked for help, invited Vladimir Prelog to visit him on his way to Germany.

Vladimir Prelog was able to separate the chiral enantiomers of Troger's base in 1944 by chromatography on an optically active substrate.

Since Vladimir Prelog disliked administrative duties, he implemented rotating chairmanship in the ETH.

Vladimir Prelog joined the ETH at the right time, since Ruzicka's Jewish co-workers left the country and went to the United States, so Vladimir Prelog filled the vacuum they left.

Vladimir Prelog found an ideal topic in the elucidation of the structure of solanine; he continued his work on Cinchona alkaloids and started to investigate strychnine.

Vladimir Prelog showed that Robert Robinson's formula for strychnine was not correct.

Vladimir Prelog considered them a record of billions of years of evolution.

In 1944 at the ETH, Vladimir Prelog managed to separate enantiomers with "asymmetric" trivalent nitrogen by column chromatography at a time when this method was still in its infancy.

Vladimir Prelog synthesised medium-sized ring compounds with 8 to 12 members from dicarboxylic acid esters by acyloin condensation and explained their unusual chemical reactivity by a "nonclassical" strain because of energetically unfavorable conformations.

Vladimir Prelog was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1961.

Vladimir Prelog was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1962 for his contribution to the development of modern stereochemistry.

Vladimir Prelog was elected to the American Philosophical Society the following year.

Vladimir Prelog was a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

An intellectual with a wide cultural background, Vladimir Prelog was one of the 109 Nobel Prize winners who signed the peace appeal for Croatia in 1991.

An urn containing Vladimir Prelog's ashes was ceremoniously interred at the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb on 27 September 2001.

In 2008, a memorial to Vladimir Prelog was unveiled in Prague.