chemicals, paints, and coatings an nouncements rose 19% to 37 from the first half a year ago. Four of the an nouncements in the first half were by foreign firms. Emerging changes in overall merger patterns in the U.S. suggest that this prominent feature on the U.S. business scene may have peaked. For instance, companies are becom ing more sophisticated and thus more successful in resisting "unfriendly" tender offers. In the first half of this year, 59% of takeover attempts that were opposed by the target company's management were canceled. In the first half of 1978, 38% of such take over attempts were canceled. Ac cording to Grimm, at least part of the reason for the increased success in resisting takeover attempts is the in creased cost of legal proceedings and bidding contests. Although merger activity remained flat in the first half, the number of large deals having a purchase price of $100 million or more rose 14% to a total of 42 from 37 in the first six months of 1978. Of the 42 large deals this year, eight had a value of more than $500 million, compared with only two in the first six months last year. Two reasons not mentioned by Grimm could explain the increasing number of large transactions—the low stock price of many companies and fear of the Kennedy-sponsored bill in Congress to close an apparent loophole in antitrust laws allowing conglomerate mergers. D
Big synthetic fuel use may speed C0 2 buildup A group of environmental scientists has warned that massive use of syn thetic fuels from coal and oil shale may accelerate the carbon dioxide buildup in the earth's atmosphere, causing climatic zone shifts, displac ing agriculture, and threatening the stability of world food supplies. In a report prepared for the Coun cil on Environmental Quality, the scientists contend that the industri alized nations, now scrambling for policies to manage increasingly scarce supplies of fossil fuels, should be considering the implications of their policies for the carbon dioxide bal ance of the atmosphere. They urge President Carter to consider this balance in formulating his new energy program. Large amounts of carbon dioxide are produced in the burning of any fossil fuel. The gas absorbs infrared radiation, preventing it from escaping into space. This absorption causes an 6
C&EN July 16, 1979
increase in the earth's surface tem perature, producing a warming effect that, the report says, probably will be conspicuous within the next 20 years, even without increased use of syn thetic fuels. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is increasing at an annual rate of about 1.5 ppm in a background of about 333 ppm, according to the report. The increase since 1860 has been at least 40 ppm and possibly as much as 70 ppm. As carbon dioxide increases, models of world climate show that the resultant warming may be as much as an average of 2° to 3° C for each doubling of carbon dioxide content and that the warming will be greater by a factor of three or four near the poles and less in the tropics. Massive use of synthetic fuels would accelerate this warming trend, the report contends, because their use produces more carbon dioxide than other carbon fuels. The report calcu lates that the production and con sumption of liquid or gaseous fuels from coal would release 3.4 X 10 15 grams of carbon per hundred quads of energy, as opposed to 1.45 X 10 15 grams from natural gas, 2.0 X 10 15 grams from oil, and 2.5 Χ 10 15 grams from burning coal directly to obtain the same amount of energy. One option President Carter re portedly is considering, as he grapples to find a solution to U.S. energy problems, is a massive development of synthetic fuels. Such a solution probably would be quite acceptable on Capitol Hill, where synthetic fuels lately have become very popular. The House recently authorized a $3 billion program for government purchase of and price supports for synthetic fuels. Numerous synthetic fuel bills have been introduced in the Senate, where the Energy & Natural Resources Committee is already working on a comprehensive energy bill, intro duced by committee chairman Henry M. Jackson (D.-Wash.). One part of the bill also calls for a major push for synthetic fuels development. Π
Robert Woodward is dead at age 62 Robert Burns Woodward died Sun day, July 8, of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge, Mass. The Donner Professor of Science at Har vard University was 62 years old. "We think he will make a name for himself in the scientific world," said James Flack Norris of Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time Woodward received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1937. And so he did, achieving
Robert B. Woodward
pre-eminence in the field of synthetic organic chemistry and winning the Nobel Prize in 1965. "The greatest figure in American organic chemistry, perhaps in this century," is how Woodward is re called by chemistry professor Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, a theoretician who collaborated with Woodward in working out the prin ciple of the conservation of orbital symmetry, now famed as the Wood ward-Hoffmann rules. Woodward, Hoffmann says, was an experimentalist who had a remark able intuition for theory—"just phe nomenal," he says. And he was "a great teacher for the people who in teracted with him." He taught how to simplify things, how to ask the right questions. And, Hoffmann says, he taught theoreticians the ways to in teract with experimentalists. Woodward also was one of the first synthetic organic chemists to use modern instrumental techniques consistently, Hoffmann recalls, and in that sense represented a new gen eration in synthetic organic chem istry. Hoffmann also notes the death of Woodward as a personal loss. "For the first time in 10 years," he says, "we were working together on some thing new to both of us." They had just begun work on the design of some molecular systems with novel con ducting properties. Hoffmann sees this undertaking of a new field by Woodward at this point in his career as a testimony to Woodward's versa tility. Highly original, elegant syntheses of natural products marked Wood ward's entire career. His Nobel Prize in Chemistry cited his meritorious contributions to the "art" of organic synthesis. That art began with the total syn thesis of quinine in 1944. Then fol lowed the syntheses of numerous compounds, among them strychnine, steroids (including cholesterol and cortisone), lysergic acid, reserpine, chlorophyll, and vitamin Bi 2 . •
