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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
our
guest speaker will be
Professor Edward C. Taylor
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University
“From Butterfly Wings to
Cancer - the Discovery of Alimta”
Social mixer, 5:30 pm in Frick Laboratory, Taylor Commons,
Princeton Univ. Presentation, 6:30 pm in the Auditorium
followed by dinner in Taylor Commons.
Biography
Prof. Edward C. Taylor received both his B.A. (1946) and his
Ph.D. (1949) degrees from Cornell University. He was a Merck
Postdoctoral Fellow (1949-50) of the National Academy of
Sciences in Zürich, Switzerland, where he studied with
Leopold Ruzicka, and then the du Pont Postdoctoral Fellow at
the University of Illinois (1950-51). He joined the faculty
at the University of Illinois in 1951, and then moved to
Princeton University in 1954. In 1966 he was appointed A.
Barton Hepburn Professor of Organic Chemistry, a position he
held until July 1997, when he was appointed A. Barton
Hepburn Professor of Organic Chemistry Emeritus and Senior
Research Scientist at Princeton. He served as Chairman of
the department from 1973 until 1979. His research interests
focused on heterocyclic and medicinal chemistry, synthetic
methodology, natural products, and organometallic chemistry.
He
holds numerous awards and honors, among them the American
Chemical Society (ACS) Heroes of Chemistry Award (together
with Joe Shih and Homer Pearce of Eli Lilly and Co.), the
ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry,
the A.C. Cope Scholar Award, and the Alfred Burger Award in
Medicinal Chemistry. He was awarded Honorary D.Sc. degrees
from Hamilton College and Princeton University. Professor
Taylor is the author of over 460 scientific papers and 52
U.S. patents, and the author, editor or co-editor of 89
books on heterocyclic chemistry and organic synthesis.
Abstract
Professor Taylor will discuss how his initial fascination in
1946 with butterfly wing pigments eventually lead to the
establishment of a remarkable collaborative research program
with Eli Lilly and Co. and how from this program came the
discovery of the compound that became ALIMTA®. ALIMTA® was
the first chemotherapy drug to be approved by the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of patients with
malignant pleural mesothelioma.
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