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Donald J. Cram

Born

in Chester, Vermont, The United States

April 22, 1919

Died

June 17, 2001

Website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Cram

Genre

Science, Chemistry, Molecular Chemistry

Influences

Jean-Marie Lehn, Charles J. Pedersen, Louis Fieser, Max Tishler, John ...more

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Donald James Cram (April 22, 1919 – June 17, 2001) was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J. Pedersen "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity." They were the founders of the field of host-guest chemistry.

Cram was born and raised in Chester, Vermont, to a Scottish immigrant father, and a German immigrant mother. His father died before Cram turned four, leaving him the only male in a family of five. He grew up on Aid to Dependent Children, and learned to work at an early age, doing jobs such as picking fruit, tossing newspapers, and painting houses, while bartering for piano lessons.

Cram attended the Winwood High School Donald James Cram (April 22, 1919 – June 17, 2001) was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J. Pedersen "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity." They were the founders of the field of host-guest chemistry.

Cram was born and raised in Chester, Vermont, to a Scottish immigrant father, and a German immigrant mother. His father died before Cram turned four, leaving him the only male in a family of five. He grew up on Aid to Dependent Children, and learned to work at an early age, doing jobs such as picking fruit, tossing newspapers, and painting houses, while bartering for piano lessons.

Cram attended the Winwood High School in Long Island, N.Y. From 1938 to 1941, he attended Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida on a national honorary scholarship. It was at Rollins that he became known for building his own chemistry equipment. In 1941, he graduated from Rollins College with a B.S. in Chemistry.

In 1942, he graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with a M.S. in Organic Chemistry, with Norman O. Cromwell serving as his thesis adviser. He subject was "Amino ketones, mechanism studies of the reactions of heterocyclic secondary amines with -bromo-, -unsaturated ketones."

In 1947, Cram graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, with Louis Fieser, serving as the adviser on his dissertation on "Syntheses and reactions of 2-(ketoalkyl)-3-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinones"

From 1942-1945, Cram worked in chemical research at Merck & Co laboratories, doing penicillin research with mentor Max Tishler. Postdoctoral work was as an American Chemical Society postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with John D. Roberts. Cram was the originator of Cram's rule, which provides a model for predicting the outcome of nucleophilic attack of carbonyl compounds. He published over 350 research papers and eight books on organic chemistry, and taught graduate and post-doctoral students from 21 different countries.

Cram expanded upon Charles Pedersen's ground-breaking synthesis of crown ethers, two-dimensional organic compounds that are able to recognize and selectively combine with the ions of certain metal elements. He synthesized molecules that took this chemistry into three dimensions, creating an array of differently shaped molecules that could interact selectively with other chemicals because of their complementary three-dimensional structures. Cram's work represented a large step toward the synthesis of functional laboratory-made mimics of enzymes and other natural molecules whose special chemical behavior is due to their characteristic structure. He also did work in stereochemistry and Cram's rule of asymmetric induction is named after him.

Cram was named an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1947, and a professor in 1955. He served there until his retirement in 1987. He was a popular teacher, having instructed some 8,000 undergraduates in his career and guided the academic output of 200 graduate students. He entertained his classes by strumming his guitar and singing folk songs. ...more

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Donald J. Cram’s books

Average rating: 4.14 · 7 ratings · 2 reviews · 10 distinct works

	Organic Chemistry by James B. Hendrickson, Donald J. Cram, George Simms Hammond 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1959 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Organická chemie by Donald J. Cram, George S. Hammond it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Organic Chemistry by Donald J. Cram, George Simms Hammond liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1964 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Donald J. Cram: From Design to Discovery 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1990	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Container Molecules and Their Guests (Monographs in Supramolecular Chemistry) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1994	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	From design to discovery 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Organic Chemistry A Series of Monographs, Volume 4: Fundamentals of Carbanion Chemistry 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fundamentals of Carbanion Chemistry. Volume 4, ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Monograph Series. 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Electrophilic substitution at saturated carbon, by Donald J. Cram [and others] 1959 [Leather Bound] 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Essence of Organic Chemistry (Addison-Wesley Series in Chemistry) by Donald J. Cram Jane M.; Cram, Donald J. Cram 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1978 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Donald J. Cram (?)

“Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired. Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.”
― Donald J. Cram

tags: biology, chemistry, evolution, immune-system, naturalism, organic-chemistry, science, scientists

2 likes

“Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work—and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.”
― Donald J. Cram, From design to discovery

tags: ability, chemist, chemistry, claims, culture, documentation, experiments, imagination, judgement, life, nobel-laureate, research, results, science, scientist, verification

2 likes

Donald J. Cram’s Followers (2)

Donald J. Cram

Combine EditionsDonald J. Cram’s books

Combine Editions
Donald J. Cram’s books