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35William
S. Knowles ’35, above left, was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in October 2001.
Three scientists shared the $1 million prize: Knowles and Ryoji
Noyori of Nagoya University in Japan for their work on chirally
catalyzed hydrogenation reactions and K. Barry Sharpless of the
Scripps Research Institute in California for his work on chirally
catalysed oxidation reactions. Sharpless is the parent of two Andover
alumni, Hannah C. Sharpless ’94 and William D. Sharpless ’96.
Working independently during the mid–1960s to the 1980s, the
three chemists devised innovative ways to build molecules without
creating a mirror-image opposite, a principle used today in making
drugs from L-DOPA to beta blockers for heart function to protease
inhibitors for AIDS. Knowles’ breakthrough dates to 1968 when
he was working for Monsanto Company. Specifically, Knowles’
work in using transition metals to make chiral catalysts for an
important type of reaction called hydrogenation pioneered an industrial
process for the production of the drug L-DOPA, which is used in
the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
Knowles, who entered Andover in 1934, graduated from Harvard and
received a doctorate from Columbia in 1942. A resident of Kirkwood,
Mo., he has been retired from Monsanto since 1986. He and wife Lesley
are the parents of three children.
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