Citizenship American Role Author Nationality American | Institutions Cornell University Fields Chemistry Name Jerrold Meinwald | |
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Born 16 January 1927 (age 97)
New York ( 1927-01-16 ) Alma mater Harvard University
University of Chicago Notable awards National Medal of Science (2014)
Nakanishi Prize (2013)
Roger Adams Award (2005)
Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1990) Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada, National Medal of Science for Chemistry | ||
Education Harvard University (1952) | ||
A conversation with jerrold meinwald
Jerrold Meinwald (born January 16, 1927) is an American chemist known for his work on chemical ecology, a field he co-founded with his late colleague and friend Thomas Eisner. He is currently the Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Cornell University. He is author or co-author of well over 400 scientific articles. His interest in chemistry was sparked by fireworks done with his friend Michael Cava when they were still in junior high school. Prof. Meinwald is a music aficionado and studied flute with Marcel Moyse – the world’s greatest flutist of his time.
Contents
- A conversation with jerrold meinwald
- Traditions of membership jerrold meinwald
- Career
- Awards
- Publications
- References
Traditions of membership jerrold meinwald
Career
Jerrold Meinwald studied chemistry at the University of Chicago where he earned his bachelor of science degree in 1948. He then went on to Harvard University where he obtained his Ph.D. with R.B. Woodward in 1952. A DuPont Fellowship brought him to Cornell, where he has spent most of his subsequent career.
Since the early 1960s, he has worked, often in collaboration with Thomas Eisner, on chemical signalling in animals, particularly insects and arthropods; he is regarded as one of the founders of the field of chemical ecology. A particular field of interest was the ways in which insects either use chemicals synthesised by the plants that they feed on, or use those plant chemicals as substrates from which to synthesize their own. A species on which he and Eisner published several times over decades is the moth Utetheisa ornatrix, which collects pyrrolizidine alkaloids from its food source and uses them as a deterrent to predators; the male also uses them as a pheromone and passes them on in its semen to the female who uses them to make her eggs unpalatable.
In analysing the constituents of plant signalling, he developed a number of retrosynthetic techniques, including the Meinwald Rearrangement where an epoxide is converted to a carbonyl in the presence of a Lewis acid; he has also performed substantial research over forty years in NMR spectroscopy. and in reactions for producing chiral derivatives in order to determine absolute configurations of chiral molecules.
In 1981, Meinwald became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.
Awards
He won the National Medal of Science in 2012. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1969, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1970, and member of the American Philosophical Society since 1987. Other notable honours: