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Robert Burns Woodward for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis. ——Nobel prize in chemistry, in1965 Woodward was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Arthur Woodward (an immigrant from England) and Margaret Woodward, nee Burns (an immigrant from Scotland, born in Glasgow). From a very early age, Woodward was attracted to chemistry. By the time he entered high school, he had already managed to perform most of the experiments in Paul Gattermans then widely used textbook of experimental organic chemistry. In 1928, Woodward obtained copies of a few original papers published in German journals from the Consul-General of the German consulate in Boston. Later, in his Cope lecture, he recalled how he had been fascinated when, among these papers, he chanced upon Diels and Alders original communication about the Diels-Alder reaction. Throughout his career, Woodward was to repeatedly and powerfully use and investigate this reaction, both in theoretical and experimental ways. In 1933, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but neglected his formal studies badly enough to be expelled the next year. MIT readmitted him in 1935, and by 1936 he had received the Bachelor of Science degree. Only one year later, MIT awarded him the doctorate, when his classmates were still graduating with their bachelors degrees. Woodwards doctoral work involved investigations related to the synthesis of the female sex hormone estrone. After a short postdoctoral stint at the University of Illinois, he took a Junior Fellowship at Harvard University from 1937 to 1938, and remained at Harvard in various capacities for the rest of his life. In the 1960s, Woodward was named Donner Professor of Science, a title that freed him from teaching formal courses so that he could devote his entire time to research. Culminating in the 1930s, the British chemists Christopher Ingold and Robert Robinson among others had investigated the mechanisms of organic r