Harvard chemist wins national award for creating new molecules

Chemist Eric N. Jacobsen of Boston will be honored April 3 by the world's largest scientific society for his achievements in developing ways to tailor-make molecules useful in the pharmaceutical industry. He will receive the 2001 Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society at its national meeting in San Diego.

When it comes to making molecules, "we're at the stage where it's not so much whether a compound can be made, but whether it can be made inexpensively, with minimal environmental impact, high purity, and such," explained Jacobsen, an organic chemist and professor at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

His own efforts to discover new reactions for making compounds have found application in the pharmaceutical industry, which he describes as a real challenge.

"They make very complicated, very pure compounds, and especially need to consider handedness," he said. Like gloves, molecules can assemble as mirror images of each other. Their effects on the body can be very different: the classic example is Thalidomide, in which one mirror image was a sedative and the other caused birth defects.

In the late 1980s Jacobsen began to design how to attach an oxygen atom to a particular side of a molecule. The reaction later turned out to be a critical step in making an AIDS drug, manufactured by Merck and Co. as Crixivan.

Thus the chemistry professor has found himself in the usual position of working closely with industry to commercialize this and other processes. "It takes a lot more than a good reaction in the laboratory," he said he learned first thing.

"In my opinion, Jacobsen has established himself as the premier young reaction designer of his generation," wrote a colleague to support his nomination for the award.

Jacobsen credited his first interest in science to his mother, who herself majored in chemistry. He received his undergraduate degree from New York University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. He is a member of the ACS organic and inorganic divisions.

The ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry is sponsored by Aldrich Chemical Co. Inc.