Prelog, Vladimir, << PREHL ohg, VLAD uh mihr or vlah DEE mihr, >> (1906-1998), was a Bosnian-born Swiss chemist who specialized in stereochemistry (the study of the spatial arrangement of atoms in molecules). He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in chemistry with the Australian chemist John Cornforth for their work on the chemical synthesis of important organic compounds.
In the early 1930’s, Prelog managed to synthesize the chemical adamantane, an organic compound whose structure of carbon atoms is diamond shaped. Later, he concentrated on studying the structure of molecules. He used X-ray equipment to examine chiral (asymmetric) molecules, structures that are often found in naturally occurring molecules. He made up a system for naming stereoisomers (molecules that have atoms with the same connections but different spatial arrangements), and then went on to study these compounds in more depth. See Isomer .
Prelog was born on July 23, 1906, in Sarajevo in Bosnia (then part of Austria-Hungary). From 1924 to 1929, he studied chemistry at the Czech Institute of Technology in Prague. He then worked at the laboratory of Gothard J. Driza, a chemical manufacturer in Prague, producing rare chemicals. In 1935, Prelog became a lecturer at the University of Zagreb, Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia). In 1942, he moved to the Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, where he was made a full professor in 1952. Prelog died on Jan. 7, 1998.
