Herbert Charles Brown (22 May 1912 – 19 December 2004) was an American chemist and recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with organoboranes.

Life and career

Brown was born Herbert Brovarnik in London, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Zhitomir, Pearl (née Gorinstein) and Charles Brovarnik, a hardware store manager and carpenter. His family moved to Chicago in June 1914, when he was two years old. Brown attended Crane Junior College in Chicago, where he met Sarah Baylen, whom he would later marry. The college was under threat of closing, and Brown and Baylen transferred to Wright Junior College. and began graduate studies at Chicago. On February 6, 1937, Brown married Baylen, whom he would later credit with sparking an interest in hydrides of boron that would eventually lead to the work for which he, together with Georg Wittig, would be awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1979, and joined the Beta Nu chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma there in 1960. He held the position of Professor Emeritus from 1978 until his death in 2004.

Brown was quick to credit his wife Sarah with supporting him and allowing him to focus on creative efforts by handling finances, maintaining the house and yard, etc. According to Brown, after receiving the Nobel prize in Stockholm, he carried the medal and she carried the US$100,000 award.

In 1971, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

He was inducted into the Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame in 2000.

He died 19 December 2004, at a hospital in Lafayette, Indiana after a heart attack. His wife died 29 May 2005, aged 89.

Research

thumb|Borane, BH<sub>3</sub>, is a gaseous compound that is only present at high temperatures. It dimerises to form diborane, B<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub>. Diborane has a pair of [[Three-center two-electron bond|three-center two-electron bonds.]] As a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, Herbert Brown studied the reactions of diborane, B<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub>. Hermann Irving Schlesinger's laboratory at the University of Chicago was one of two laboratories that prepared diborane. It was a rare compound that was only prepared in small quantities. Schlesinger was researching the reactions of diborane to understand why the simplest hydrogen-boron compound is B<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub> instead of BH<sub>3</sub>.

thumb|A general reaction between diborane and a [[ketone]] When Brown started his own research, he observed the reactions of diborane with aldehydes, ketones, esters, and acid chlorides. He discovered that diborane reacts with aldehydes and ketones to produce dialkoxyboranes, which are hydrolyzed by water to produce alcohols. Until this point, organic chemists did not have an acceptable method of reducing carbonyls under mild conditions. Yet Brown's Ph.D. thesis published in 1939 received little interest. Diborane was too rare to be useful as a synthetic reagent.

See also

  • List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

  • Herbert Brown obituary in Chemical & Engineering News
  • Herbert Brown obituary in USA Today
  • National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
  • Nobel Lecture 1979