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About the Speaker
| Dr. Ault received his bachelor's degree
from Amherst College in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in
1960. After teaching for two years at Grinnell College, he moved to
Cornell College, where he is now a professor of chemistry. Dr. Ault was
the recipient of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) predoctoral
fellowship in 1958 and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science Faculty
Fellowship in 1968. He has taught during summers at Dartmouth College, the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, and, for the past thirteen years, at
Harvard University. He has been a visiting professor at The Pennsylvania
State University and at Brandeis University. He is the author of
Techniques and Experiments for Organic Chemistry, the sixth edition of
which was published in 1998; Problems in Organic Structure Determination,
An Introduction to Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (with Dr. Gerald O.
Dudek); and with his daughter Margaret, A Handy and Systematic Catalog of
NMR Spectra. He also published, with Professor Marc Loudon, the Solutions
Guide to Accompany Organic Chemistry, first edition, by Marc Loudon. He is
presently working on his own textbook for introductory organic chemistry.
Dr. Ault has been president of the Midwest Association of Chemistry
Teachers in Liberal Arts Colleges (MACTLAC), has been char of the Iowa
Local Section of the ACS, and is a consultant/evaluator for the North
Central Association of Colleges and Schools. |
About the Meeting
| Title
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Chance and Design in Organic Chemistry |
| Abstract
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The purpose of this talk is to tell some of the
stories that illustrate the subtle and complex relationships between
hard work and good luck in the advancement of organic chemistry or of
any branch of science. These relationships have been summarized in
many ways, two of which are "Chance favors only the prepared mind"
(Louis Pasteur), and "The harder I work, the luckier I get" (Lee
Iacocca). Examples will include the discovery of the enantiomeric
crystals of sodium ammonium racemate by Louis Pasteur, the Birch
reduction by A. J. Birch, the sodium borohydride reduction of acetone
and the hydroboration of olefins by H. C. Brown, the Wittig reaction
by Georg Wittig, and the prediction of the fluxional nature of
bullvalene by William Doering. In so far as it is possible, the
motivation for the research that led to these discoveries will be
presented in the words of the scientists who did the work. The main
lesson to be learned from these stories is that what turn out in
retrospect to be the great events of science are the result of
observations made in the course of routine work. Confidence in the
quality of the experimental work coupled with sufficient curiosity
about an unexpected result are all that are needed for great work in
science. |
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