Vladimir Prelog

Vladimir Prelog (23 July 1906 – 7 January 1998) was a Croatian-Swiss organic chemist who received the 1975 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions.

Prelog was born and grew up in Sarajevo.

He lived and worked in Prague, Zagreb and Zürich during his lifetime.

Prelog was born in Sarajevo, Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that time within Austria-Hungary, to Croat parents who were working there.

His father, Milan, a native of Zagreb, was a history professor at a gymnasium in Sarajevo and later at the University of Zagreb.

As an 8-year-old boy, he stood near the place where the assassination of Franz Ferdinand occurred.

Prelog attended elementary school in Sarajevo, but in 1915, as a child, Prelog moved to Zagreb (then part of the Austro-Hungary) with his parents.

In Zagreb he graduated from elementary school.

At first, he attended gymnasium in Zagreb, but soon afterwards, his father got a job in Osijek, so he continued his education there.

He spent two years in Osijek gymnasium, where he became interested in chemistry under the influence of his professor Ivan Kuria.

In 1922, as a 16-year-old boy, his first scientific work was published in the German scientific journal Chemiker Zeitung.

The article concerned an analytical instrument used in chemical labs.

Prelog completed his high school education in Zagreb in 1924.

Following his father's wishes, he moved to Prague, where he received his diploma in chemical engineering from the Czech Technical University in 1928.

He received his Sc.D in 1929.

His teacher was Emil Votoček, while his assistant and mentor Rudolf Lukeš introduced him to the world of organic chemistry.

Upon leaving the Czech Technical University, Prelog worked in the plant laboratory of the private firm of G.J. Dríza in Prague; few academic positions were available due to the Great Depression.

Prelog was in charge of the production of rare chemicals that were not commercially available at that time.

He worked for Driza from 1929 until 1935.

During the time, he got his first doctoral candidate, a company owner at Driza.

He performed research in his spare time, investigating alkaloids in cacao bark.

Prelog wanted to work in an academic environment, so he accepted the position of lecturer at the University of Zagreb in 1935.

At the Technical Faculty in Zagreb, he lectured on organic chemistry and chemical engineering.

With the help of collaborators and students, Prelog started researching quinine and its related compounds.

He was financially supported by the pharmaceutical factory "Kaštel", currently Pliva.

He developed a financially successful method of producing Streptazol, one of the first commercial sulfonamides.

In 1941, while at Zagreb, Prelog developed the first synthesis of adamantane, a hydrocarbon with an unusual structure that was isolated from Moravian oil fields.

In 1941, in the midst of World War II, Prelog was invited to lecture in Germany by Richard Kuhn.

Shortly afterwards, Lavoslav Ružička, whom Prelog asked for help, invited Prelog to visit him on his way to Germany.

He and his wife used those invitations to escape to Zürich in Switzerland.

With Ružička's help, he gained support from CIBA Ltd. and started to work in the Organic Chemistry Laboratory in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, or Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule).

Prelog was able to separate the chiral enantiomers of Tröger's base in 1944 by chromatography on an optically active substrate.

With this chiral resolution, he was able to prove that not only carbon but also nitrogen atoms can be the chiral centre in a molecule, which had been speculated for several years.

His relationship with Ružička helped him climb up the academic hierarchical ladder.

Starting as an assistant, he became Privat-Dozent, Titularprofessor, associate professor, and in 1952 full professor.

In 1957 he succeeded Ružička as head of the Laboratory.

Since Prelog disliked administrative duties, he implemented rotating chairmanship in the ETH.

Prelog joined the ETH at the right time, since Ružička's Jewish co-workers left the country and went to the United States, so Prelog filled the vacuum they left.

Prelog's main interest was focused on alkaloids.

He found an ideal topic in the elucidation of the structure of solanine; he continued his work on Cinchona alkaloids and started to investigate strychnine.