Brown, Herbert Charles (1912-2004), an American chemist, shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in chemistry with the German scientist Georg Wittig. They received the prize for developing compounds capable of producing chemical bonds useful in the manufacture of drugs and in other industrial processes. Brown’s pioneering research into boron compounds also helped him achieve the award.
Brown’s doctoral thesis focused on the reduction (removal of oxygen) of carbonyl compounds, compounds of carbon monoxide and a metal, using diborane, a gaseous compound of hydrogen and boron. He later specialized in organic chemistry (the study of compounds made by or derived from living things) and, particularly, in the uses of boron compounds in organic chemistry.
Brown conducted pioneering research into boranes (unstable compounds of boron) and discovered organoboranes (organic boranes). Organoboranes are useful in the synthesis (formation) of other substances. Brown also researched steric effects, the effects of the spatial arrangement of atoms within a molecule. He wrote Hydroboration (1962) and Organic Synthesis via Boranes (1975).
Brown was born Herbert Brovarnik in London on May 22, 1912. In 1914, he moved with his family to the United States. Brown attended the University of Chicago and taught at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit. From 1947 to 1978, he was a professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He died on Dec. 19, 2004.
