Ernest Ludwig Eliel (1921–2008)

Ernest Ludwig Eliel died on September 18, 2008 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at the age of 86. He is survived by his wife Eva and two daughters, Ruth and Carol. By today's standards, Ernest Eliel's early life was difficult and tumultuous. Ernest was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1921. After the Nazis came to power, his parents immigrated to Palestine in 1938, and he left for Scotland. After only one year of study at the University of Edinburgh, he was sent to a Canadian internment camp, where he spent ten months. By way of Trinidad and Venezuela, he landed in Cuba where he lived for five years, earning his undergraduate degree at the University of Havana. In 1946, he immigrated to the United States and received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois after just two years working with Harold Snyder. He joined the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in 1948. One of his first research projects was the synthesis of non-racemic ethylbenzene, in which the chirality was due to deuterium substitution at the methylene group. Through his contacts with Vladimir Prelog and Derek Barton, he became interested in conformational analysis, and postulated a rationale for the difference in rate of acylation of neoisomenthol and isomenthol. This idea ultimately led to an NMR method for determining conformational equilibria of various substituted cyclohexanes. In 1962 he published Stereochemistry of Carbon Compounds,1 the first treatise to organize and focus attention on the rapidly developing field of stereochemistry. The monograph has been translated into Japanese, German, Czech, and Russian and sold over 41 000 copies. It is estimated that 100 000 chemists learned stereochemistry from this highly influential monograph. In 1972 Ernest moved his laboratory to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Royce Murray, who was acting chair at the time, recalls recruiting Eliel to the department. “I had the personal pleasure of hosting Ernest Eliel at UNC in 1971. He was a recently elected National academy member; he was 50 and I a tender 34. I remember him asking me, 'Why does your department want to hire a 50 year old chemist?' I answered, as I recall, for some more of your good chemistry, and for your leadership.” The chemistry department subsequently benefited immensely from both, as Eliel did move there in 1972, and continued his development of conformation analysis, focusing on heterocycles. Later in his career he worked extensively with oxathianes, developing a general chiral auxiliary from pulegone that he used to prepare enantiomerically enriched α-hydroxy acids that were used in the preparation of a variety of chiral natural products. In 1994, the second important textbook on stereochemistry, Stereochemistry of Organic Compounds, coauthored by Sam Wilen, was published.1 2 Ernest served the science community in a number of very important ways. He was elected as president of the American Chemical Society and was a global ambassador for chemistry focusing on bringing many foreign scholars to the U.S. and working particularly to improve science and chemical education in Latin America. For his efforts he was named one of the 75 most influential chemists of the twentieth century and received the Pimentel Award for Chemical Education as well as the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. Ernest Eliel was a giant in his field who was always gracious and generous with his time. A former student of Ernest's recounted this story: The student had begun an undergraduate research project with Ernest, who had assigned him some library work to research the topic before beginning in the laboratory. The student dutifully went to the library and then reported back to Eliel. Upon examining what the student had done, Eliel said, “No one has ever shown you how to use the library have they?” He then went with the student and spent two hours helping him find the information that he needed, showing him, in the process, how to use the proper reference works. His science and his personality have had an immeasurable impact on the UNC Department of Chemistry. His moved to UNC Chapel Hill was an important crossroads for the department. The addition of a new building and the hiring of Eliel and Robert Parr, two new members of the National Academy of Sciences to the Department, are largely responsible for the rapid growth of the Department of Chemistry at UNC, which is now ranked in the top 15 in the USA. Our Department is well known for its collegial culture; the faculty's attitude is that what is good for the Department is good for the individual. The development of that culture has been an important key to the success of our Department. The evolution of that culture is due in no small measure to Ernest Eliel's calm, scholarly approach to achieving excellence. His influence has certainly had a significant and lasting effect on this Department. Ernest's sense of fairness and integrity and his persistent striving for excellence are now part of our basic culture.3, 4

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