Herbert C. Brown: A Dissenting View

Herbert Charles Brown (May 22, 1912 – December 19, 2004) was an American chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 for his work with organoboranes. 

He was born in New York City and died in Los Angeles.

The person he credits with igniting his interest in boron hydrides, a topic that was connected to the work for which he and Georg Wittig shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979. 

In 1938, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, which he had attended for only two years prior to starting doctoral studies.

The process for manufacturing sodium borohydride (NaBH4), which is used to generate boranes, which are compounds of the elements boron and hydrogen, was developed by Brown during World War II while working with Hermann Irving Schlesinger and Hermann Irving Schlesinger. 

As a result of his research, the first generic method for the production of asymmetric pure enantiomers was discovered. 

His working field was represented by the elements discovered as initials of his name: H, C, and B.

In 1969, he was given the National Medal of Science by President Richard Nixon.

Upon accepting the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, according to Brown, he carried the medal while she carried the $100,000 prize money.

In 1971, he was awarded the Golden Plate Award by the American Academy of Achievement for his contributions to science and technology.

In 2000, he was inducted into the Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame for his contributions to the fraternity.

Herbert C. Brown

American chemist Herbert C. Brown  was regarded as one of the foremost figures in the field. 

His Nobel Prize-winning work with boron compounds transformed the field of synthetic organic chemistry.

During his time at Purdue, he made discoveries that opened up totally new pathways in both academic and industrial chemistry. 

A wide range of chemical molecules, including pharmaceuticals such as the antidepressant Prozac and the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, are currently being synthesised with the help of boranes.

Brown began working at Purdue in 1947. When he and his students discovered hydroboration processes in the late 1950s, they were the first to demonstrate that unsaturated organic compounds could be easily transformed to organoboranes by the addition of boron and hydrogen to numerous bonds.

He oversaw a significant number of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, among them the Nobel laureates Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, who both studied with Brown in the 1960s and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. 

Even after he retired in 1979, Brown remained an active researcher until his death in 2004, at the age of 91.

Saul Winstein 

Saul Winstein (October 8, 1912 – November 23, 1969) was a Jewish Canadian chemist who was best known for discovering the Winstein reaction. 

He was born in Toronto and died in Vancouver. He maintained that the stability of the norbornyl cation could only be explained by a non-classical cation, and that this was the case.

 In response, Herbert C. Brown and I got into a heated dispute about the presence of -delocalized carbocations. 

Winstein was also the first to introduce the concept of an intimate ion pair, which was further developed by others. 

He was a co-author of the Grunwald–Winstein equation, which dealt with the rate of solvolysis.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Richard F. Heck, who had previously studied under Winstein during his doctorate studies.

Contributions of Herbert C. Brown

Brown began working as Schlesinger’s personal research assistant in 1939.

 The research conducted by Schlesinger’s group at the University of Chicago was soon overshadowed by World War II. 

Contributions were made in response to the Army Signal Corps’s request for a straightforward way for generating hydrogen in the field of battle. 

The discovery and large-scale synthesis of sodium borohydride and lithium aluminium hydride, on the other hand, were of far more long-term significance.

Sodium borohydride is a very moderate reducing agent, but lithium aluminium hydride is one of the most powerful available on the market today. 

In his studies at the University of Chicago (1939–43), Wayne State University (1943–47) in Detroit, and Purdue University (1947–78) in West Lafayette, Ind.  Brown concentrated on the discovery of new reducing agents, which he called “reduction agents.” 

Consequently, organic chemists now have access to an unprecedented range of reducing agents that have been meticulously tuned to meet the needs of certain synthetic applications. 

It was this work that was referenced to in the first part of his Nobel Prize citation, which was written in his honour.

At the time of its discovery (1956), hydroboranes were virtually unknown and regarded to be unlikely candidates for synthetic applications.

 Brown and his colleagues went on to demonstrate that organoboranes, which are formed by the hydroboration reaction, were in fact capable of a wide range of synthetically important reactions. 

This work was mentioned in the second portion of his Nobel Prize citation, which was dedicated to him.

Brown announced his retirement shortly before being awarded the Nobel Prize. He is the author of several books, including Hydroboration (1962) and Organic Syntheses through Boranes (1975).

Conclusion

Brown graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in 1936 and a doctorate in 1938, respectively. 

His dissertation, which he completed under the supervision of Hermann Schlesinger, dealt with the reactivity of diborane with aldehydes and ketones, among other things.

It was the beginning of a lifelong commitment to the study of organoborane chemistry. Inorganic boron-hydrogen compounds and derivatives are collectively referred to as borane. 

It is possible to trace Winstein’s early research into the chlorosulfonation of alkanes (hydrocarbon compounds with only single molecular bonds) to the beginning of his almost equally long devotion to physical organic chemistry. 

Winstein maintained a prolific output of work of rigorous quality and perceptiveness, with an emphasis on logic and the search for answers to fundamental questions. 

He won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, which was awarded to him posthumously.