Elias James Corey Quotes

As soon as chemists have a definite conception of the internal structure of the molecule of an organic compound, they are able to tackle the task of producing these substances by artificial methods, i.e. by synthesis, as we call it.

Synthesis is the process of making a natural product, or some other substance, artificially, in the lab, one step at a time, from extremely simple building blocks.

In the lab, we're discovering that nature can do chemistry we never dreamed was possible.

My doctoral work was completed by the end of 1950 and, at the age of twenty-two, I joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an instructor in chemistry under the distinguished chemists Roger Adams and Carl S. Marvel.

I am the mild-mannered organic chemistry teacher at the University of Oklahoma.

The structural or biogenetic relations of plant products as deduced from the recognizable architectural components of the molecules have been consistent guides in my investigations.

Much of my work in biology has been driven by my early training in chemistry. When studying a new chemical compound, the first and most important thing is to determine its detailed molecular structure.

Chemistry was always my weakest subject in high school and college.

There are, in fact, very few organic zinc compounds; only the first members of the series, which correspond to the simplest organic radicals, can be prepared without too much difficulty, but they have the disadvantage of being spontaneously inflammable in air and are consequently very dangerous to handle.

In organic chemistry, we have learnt to derive from compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen, i.e. from the hydrocarbons, all other types of combinations, such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, acids, etc.

Organic compounds exist in which a hydrogen atom, joined to the carbon, acquires acid properties as a result of the proximity of certain functional groupings.

As soon as we can wrest from Nature the secret of the internal structure of the compounds produced by her, chemical science can then even surpass Nature by producing compounds as variations of the natural ones, which the living cell is unable to construct.

As early as 1912, we worked on the problem of the hydrogenation of organic substances with the aid of highly compressed hydrogen.

In 1967, I had formed a collaboration with Hermann Eggerer, then of Muenchen, and together, we solved the problem of the 'asymmetric methyl group' and applied the solution in some of the many ways that have proved possible.

The essential principles of the three-dimensional structure of organic molecules had been correctly formulated by the first Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Jacobus van't Hoff, as early as 1874.

I started doing experiments - mostly in organic chemistry, because it was so much more interesting - in my mother's laundry at home.

I am a creature of chemicals.

The artificial products do not have any molecular dissymmetry; and I could not indicate the existence of a more profound separation between the products born under the influence of life and all the others.

When I began playing around at being a physical chemist, I enjoyed very much doing work on the structure of DNA molecules, something which I would never have dreamed of doing before I started.

Many transition states have a well-defined preferred geometrical requirement.

In bitter almond oil, like in a great number of other substances that previously had been counted among the 'aromatic compounds' on behalf of their strong smell, a derivative of benzene is present. The special properties of benzene and its derivatives are caused by the typical arrangement of their carbon atoms.

I started my scientific work by putting forward a hypothesis on the arrangement of atoms in nitrogen-containing molecules.

An important event in my scientific life has been my appointment as a Professor at the College de France in 1973.

Chemists have always been in the business of taking atoms and putting them together with other atoms with precisely defined connections.

After a year of post-graduate research, I won an 1851 Exhibition scholarship to work at Oxford with Robert Robinson. Two such scholarships were awarded each year, and the other was won by Rita Harradence, also of Sydney and also an organic chemist.