Cornell chemists have garnered three of the American Chemical Society's 10 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards for 1997, and a fourth member of the chemistry faculty, Harold A. Scheraga, has earned the ACS Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research.
The three Cope Scholars are: professors of chemistry Barry K. Carpenter, David B. Collum and Jon C. Clardy, the Horace White Professor of Chemistry. Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards recognize excellence in the field of organic chemistry and require the recipient to deliver a lecture at the annual Cope symposium held in conjunction with the ACS national meeting in August 1997 in Las Vegas.
Scheraga, the George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, is a protein chemist who was recognized for his "use of computers in the advancement of the chemical and biological sciences."
Scheraga's research group has long used computer modeling and simulations in computational analysis of the complexities of protein folding. He was first to recognize the implications for physical chemistry in the discovery that amino acid sequences dictate the three-dimensional structures of particular proteins.
Carpenter's research group uses both experimental and computational techniques to understand the mechanisms in reactions of organic molecules. Recently, these studies have focused on the behavior of transient intermediates, often unobservable factors in organic reactions which may not be properly described by current theories.
Clardy's investigations in chemical biology have determined the structures of 'red tide toxins,' extraordinarily potent neurotoxins produced by marine algal blooms that help to understand the functioning of nerve cells. His group also described the structure of anticancer agents such as bryostatin, now undergoing human clinical trials.
Collum's group studies the very complex chemistry of lithium, one of the most widely employed metals in organic chemistry with applications ranging from lithium-based catalysts for the synthesis of synthetic rubber and related polymers to the synthesis of complex pharmaceutical agents.