Ральф Рафаэль: Британдық химиктің өмір жолы мен ғылыми еңбектері

British chemist

Ralph Alexander Raphael (1 January 1921 – 27 April 1998) was a British organic chemist, well known for his use of acteylene derivatives in the synthesis of natural products with biological activity.

Ralph Raphael was born in Croydon, London on New Year's Day 1921, the son of master tailor Jacob ("Jack") Raphael (1889 1978) and his wife, Lily (née Woolf; 1892 1956). He attended secondary school at Wesley College, Dublin and then Tottenham County School, where a chemistry master, Edgar Ware, introduced him to the subject that would become Raphael's lifetime passion. In 1939 he won scholarships to study at Imperial College, graduating BSc with a first class degree in 1941 and winning the Hofmann Prize for practical chemistry.

As a new PhD, Raphael was allocated to the wartime effort on the antibiotic penicillin, working from 1943 to 1946 at the May & Baker laboratories. After the war, he obtained an ICI fellowship (for 1946–1949) that allowed him to return to Imperial College to pursue independent research: an early highlight was his synthesises of penicillic acid, the major product of acid degradation of penicillin (although not containing its characteristic β lactam substructure). Another was his collaboration with Franz Sondheimer on natural products including an insecticide extracted from Zanthoxylum clava herculis (a diene then called herculin, now systematically named as (2E,8E) N isobutyl 2,8 dodecadienamide); work which led to Raphael's award of the Meldola Medal in 1948. In 1954, Raphael moved to Queen's University, Belfast as its first Professor of Organic Chemistry. There he published an important book on acetylene chemistry, building on his broad experience of these compounds. In 1957, Raphael returned to the University of Glasgow as the Regius Professor of Chemistry,. In 1960 he finished work on a text book for undergraduates, which was updated and re issued several times. In 1972 Raphael became head of the Department of Organic, Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University. This post had been made vacant by the retirement, on ill health grounds, of Lord Todd, the previous holder of the 1702 Chair in Organic Chemistry. Raphael also became a Fellow of Christ's College. On retirement in 1988 he was granted emeritus status within his college and department, reflecting his distinguished service.

Raphael studied many natural products, especially of the type that were biologically active and which would provide a challenge for synthesis but might be the realistic target of a single PhD student's thesis. He and his students published syntheses of 2 deoxyribose, aaptamine, aphidicolin, apiose, arachidonic acid, arcyriaflavin B, baikiain, bullatenone, chrysanthemic acid, clovene, cordycepose, cuparene, erythrulose, exaltolide, farnesiferol C, geiparvarin, gibberone, histamine, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, lipoic acid, pseudomonic acid, pyrenophorin, Queen bee acid, shikimic acid, staurosporinone, strigol, steganacin, steganone, trichodermin and virantmicin. In another intriguing publication in Nature, Raphael collaborated with David Rubio to identify components used in the surface treatment of the wood of stringed instruments made by Stradivarius in Cremona and showed that a version of these substances could be used to improve the tone of modern instruments.

Raphael was interested in molecules of theoretical, as well as practical, interest. In 1951, co worked and co authored with J. W. Cook and A. I. Scott, he published the first synthesis of the quasi aromatic compound tropolone and the thujaplicin natural products which contained this unusual ring system. and from Thuja plicata independently by Holger Erdtman in 1948 (all three isomers; α , β and γ thujaplicins).