Frederick Edward Ziegler

Professor of Chemistry

Fred Ziegler, B.S., Fairleigh Dickinson University, Ph.D. Columbia University, faculty member at Yale since 1965. Your encyclopedic knowledge of synthesis and its chemical literature, a zest for innovation, and an ability to inspire your students and postdoctoral collaborators have allowed you to march through a daunting landscape of challenges in the field of natural product synthesis. Your name has become synonymous with the concept of “tandem” reactions, in which a precursor molecule is cleverly designed to undergo two successive rearrangements and thus create a completely different product molecule with exquisite geometrical control, As example, one of your syntheses not only established a new approach to controlling molecular geometry, but also showed that the widely accepted molecular structure, which you had successfully synthesized, was NOT the structure of the natural product. Your ingenuity allowed you to quickly modify the synthesis and you reaped the bonus of a paper with the Pirandellian title “The Synthesis of Neosporol: A Trichothecene in Search of a Natural Product.” This is typical of the power and ingenuity of much of your work.

Beyond Yale, you founded the NSF workshops on organic synthesis in natural products Chemistry and served as a leading figure and chairman in the series of Gordon Research Conferences on Natural Products. Within the University arena you have been DGS and Chair of the department, and, most importantly, have mentored 39 Ph.D. students and some two dozen postdoctoral collaborators, many of whom have gone on to positions of leadership in academia and chemical industry. One of your signal contribution to Yale has been your teaching of elementary organic chemistry to generations of students, and your creation of a comprehensive web site for the course that is widely admired, emulated and linked. Stalwart pitcher of the chemistry department baseball team, yours was the generosity and sympathy that could provide the perfect gift for President Giamatti when he left Yale to lead the National League—your childhood glove autographed by his Red Sox favorite “Zeke” Zarilla. Son of a policeman who was a plumber after hours, you value a non-nonsense, substantive approach to experience which your affectionate colleagues will try to emulate now, as they say, “Thanks for the great game,” and look forward to extra innings.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans