Photo credit: ETH Zürich — File:Vladimir Prelog ETH-Bib Portr 00214.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 3.0
Vladimir Prelog
1906–1998 · Croatia, Switzerland · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1975
Croatian-born Swiss chemist who gave organic stereochemistry its rigorous rules, including the Cahn–Ingold–Prelog notation.
Nobel Prize work
Prelog systematised the stereochemistry of organic molecules: with Cahn and Ingold he created the R/S sequence rules for naming chiral centres, and he uncovered the stereospecificity of many enzymatic reactions. His rules turned stereochemistry into a universal, predictive language of organic chemistry.
Fields
Related topics
Structural and stereoisomerism (cis–trans, enantiomers)
Distinguish constitutional isomers from stereoisomers, then analyze geometric and optical stereochemistry using molecular connectivity and three-dimensional arrangement.
Alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids
Three large families of natural products arise from different biosynthetic building blocks and show wide structural variety and biological activity.