Nobel laureates:John Warcup Cornforth

摘要

This second part of a life portrait of John Cornforth is an extract from the recently published Australia's Nobel Laureates.After the war ended Cornforth returned to his earlier work on the synthesis of sterols. His close collaboration with Robinson continued after he and Rita joined the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council and worked at its National Institute, first at Hampstead and then at Mill Hill. By 1951, Cornforth and Robinson were able to complete, simultaneously with Woodward at Harvard, the first total synthesis of the non-aromatic steroids. Steroids are a class of naturally occurring organic substances and their derivatives that are of great importance in biology, medicine and chemistry.