R. B. Woodward, chemistry legend

On what would be Robert Burns Woodward's 100th birthday, C&EN looks back at his legacy using footage of the man himself. To read more, visit cenm.ag/woodwar....
Watch the original video clips here: bit.ly/RBWoodward
Speical thanks to the Hoye Group & Addison Ault for conserving and sharing this footage.

[@aniket789]

I had Fortune to work in Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow. The legend of Woodward is still alive and can be felt in there even after he is is gone more than 40 years. Heroes never dies

[@vcube1234]

what faculty did you work with? I was there during my undergraduate but did not fully appreciate the legacy of the department. Curious to hear your opinion of Corey and if we might have interacted with some of the same faculty

[@aniket789]

@@vcube1234 I worked with Kishi. Unfortunately he passed away yesterday. 😔

[@morrisdweck32]

@@aniket789an brilliant chemist and an amazing man.

[@moons4932]

WOW

[@FrankGutowski-ls8jt]

I heard him speak in person. Every one of his lectures is extemporaneous, and sounds polished, like these excerpts. They could be transcribed, published and would appear to have been carefully edited. He’ll hold forth for hours speaking that way. He recalls everything. I was in the basement of the Mallinkrodt Chemistry building one Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1968, where he almost ran into me as he rounded a corner carrying two grocery sacks. He said, “Excuse me,” as he passed by. Another time, he showed up at MIT for a lecture by a famous Japanese chemist. Woodward laughed when he employed a hydride shift in aqueous solution to describe a mechanism.

[@vcube1234]

do you have any full lectures of Woodward? all I can find online are the B12 lecture and the cephalosporin C lectures, and find hearing him talk in these lectures to give invaluable insights into his achievements and thinking

[@starvetodeath123]

Awesome video! And quite nostalgic for me in a way. When I was a young idealistic undergraduate - before life happened and majors switched - I used to be passionate for chemistry and owed a lot of my fascination of it to the contributions of chemists like Woodward. In fact, my profile pic is an callback to a time in my life when I wanted to be just like the giants of the 20th c. This video brings me back to the reverence I had (and still do) for the great chemists. Robert Burns Woodward: a one-of-a-kind guy.

[@hrishikeshdeore5727]

What do you do now?

[@dudeokgo]

Old school swagger with the cigarette…chemistry in motion