NEWS OF THE WEEK OBITUARY
HERBERT C. BROWN DEAD AT AGE 92
HYDROBORATION Adding B-H to unsaturated organic molecules such as alkenes leads to compounds that can be converted to many other classes of molecules.
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C = C • Η—Β
Nobel Laureate will be remembered for pioneering work in boron chemistry
H
ERBERT C. BROWN, THE R.
B. Wetherill Research Pro fessor Emeritus of chemistry at Purdue University died on Dec.
19 at the age of 92. Brown will long be remembered for his pioneering work in boron chemistry and for the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Brown was born in London in 1912 and moved to the U.S. when he was two years old. He began
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high school at age 12 but dropped out two years later to run the fam ily's hardware store when his fa ther died, according to an inter view in "Candid Science" by Istvân Hargittai (World Scientific PubUshing, 2000). "I'm afraid I neglected the business and spent a lot of time reading books," Brown recalled for Hargittai. "I enjoyed studying." So Brown's mother arranged for the teenager to return to school and work in the store in the afternoons. Later, he studied chemistry at the University of Chicago and completed a Ph.D. degree there in 1938. From 1943 to 1947, Brown held faculty positions at Wayne State University Detroit, and then moved to Purdue, where he was appointed professor of chemistry While at the University of Chicago, Brown devised a method for preparing sodium borohydride, NaBH 4 . This compound was used to generate hydrogen gas for weather balloons during World War II and is used nowadays
POLICY
Environmental Risks To Gulf Veterans
A
n Institute of Medicine (Ι0Μ) review has concluded that veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War may have an increased risk of lung cancer because of war-related exposures to air pollution, vehicle exhaust, and other combustible products. Ι0Μ committee chair Lynn R. Goldman, professor at the Bloomberg School of Pub lic Health, Johns Hopkins University, says the Ι0Μ review "provides sufficient evi dence that exposure to combustion prod
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ucts during the Gulf War could be associ ated with lung cancer in some veterans." For other illnesses and conditions, the committee found only limited or insuffi cient evidence of increased health risks. This finding applies to oral, nasal, and bladder cancers; to asthma; and to low birth weight and preterm births by women who were exposed while pregnant. The committee reviewed 800 studies, yet found scant information about actual expo sure levels of pollutants to service mem
in some fuel-cell applications. In 1956, while at Purdue, Brown discovered that unsaturated organic molecules can be converted readily to organoboranes through hydroboration reactions, in which boron and hydrogen add to multiple bonds. For example, the reaction of simple alkenes with diborane (Ε^Ηβ) yields trialkylboranes. These compounds can be oxidized to form alcohols. Simi larly, hydroboration of alkynes leads to vinylboranes, which can be converted to several classes of compounds including aldehydes, ketones, and alkenes. Brown is al so known for investigating chem ical effects of steric strain and measuring the strain quantitatively Brown is survived by his son, Charles A. Brown, and by his wife, Sarah Baylen, whom he credits with drawing his attention to boron chemistry Brown related in his Nobel Prize lecture that, when he completed his bachelor's degree in 1936, his soon-to-be wife presented him with a book on the hydrides of boron and sil icon as a graduation gift. "This was the time of the De pression, and none ofus had much money," he recalled. "It appears that she selected as her gift the most economical chemistry book ($2.06) available in the Universi ty of Chicago bookstore. Such are the developments that can shape a career."—MITCH JACOBY
bers, an issue that prevented the commit tee from drawing specific conclusions about health problems veterans might ex perience. There was no systematic moni toring during the war of air contamination from oil-well fires and from other combus tion sources, such as heaters or engines. And there are no data allowing compar isons between exposure to air contaminat ed during the Gulf War and to air with simi lar contamination in civilian settings. This is the third study by I0M of health issues for Gulf War veterans. The com plete report can be found on the Web at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11180.html. —DAVID HANSON
HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
