Donald J. Cram
| Donald James Cram | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 22, 1919 Chester, Vermont |
| Died | June 17, 2001 (aged 82) Palm Desert, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | chemistry |
| Institutions | UCLA, Merck & Co, MIT |
| Alma mater |
Rollins College University of Nebraska Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | Louis Fieser |
| Known for |
Cram's rule Host guest chemistry phenonium ions paracyclophanes |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1987) Glenn T. Seaborg Medal (1989) National Medal of Science (1993) Guggenheim fellowship (1955) |
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. By the time he turned eighteen, he had worked at least eighteen different jobs.
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, where he worked as an assistant in the chemistry department, and was active in theater, chapel choir, Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Society, and Zeta Alpha Epsilon. 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. His 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"
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