Arthur John Birch
Personal
Other names:
Job / Known for: Organic chemist
Left traces: Birch reduction and polyketide theory
Born
Date: 1915-08-03
Location: AU Sydney
Died
Date: 1995-12-08 (aged 80)
Resting place: AU canberra
Death Cause: Unknown
Family
Spouse: Jean Service (1944-1995)
Children: None
Parent(s): Frank and Hilda Birch
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About me / Bio:
Arthur John Birch, AC CMG FRS FAA (3 August 1915 – 8 December 1995) was an Australian organic chemist who made significant contributions to the fields of organic synthesis, natural products chemistry, and steroid chemistry. He was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1915, and graduated from the University of Sydney with degrees in mathematics and chemistry. He obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford in 1940, where he worked under Sir Robert Robinson on the synthesis of sex hormones. He then joined the University of Cambridge as a Smithson Fellow, where he worked with Lord Todd on the structure of vitamin B12. He returned to Australia in 1952 as a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Sydney, where he developed the Birch reduction, a method of reducing aromatic rings using sodium and liquid ammonia. This reaction became widely used in synthetic organic chemistry, especially for the modification of steroids. He also proposed the polyketide theory, which explains the biosynthesis of a large class of natural products from simple building blocks. He moved to Manchester University in 1955 as a Professor of Organic Chemistry, where he continued his research on steroids and natural products. He also collaborated with Dorothy Hodgkin on the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12. In 1967, he returned to Australia again as the founding Dean of the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University in Canberra. He remained there until his retirement in 1980. He also served as the President of the Australian Academy of Science from 1982 to 1986, and chaired the Independent Inquiry into CSIRO in 1977. He published over 440 scientific papers and reports, and received many awards and honors for his achievements, including the Royal Medal, the Davy Medal, the Tetrahedron Prize, and the ANZAAS Medal. He was also a Fellow of several scientific societies, such as the Royal Society, the Australian Academy of Science, and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1987 for his services to science. He died in Canberra in 1995 at the age of 80.
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