Two young Harvard chemists wrote a modest note to the American Chemical Society. It said: "We wish to record the first total synthesis of quinine."
So ended a 90-year-old search for a method of manufacturing a synthetic for the drug that the Japs (by their seizure of the natural supply in the East Indies) have made a critical weapon of war.
Dr. Robert Burns Woodward, 27, and his 2 7-year-old associate William von Eggers Doering detailed the 15 difficult steps of their process, in sentences bristling with 20-letter chemists' words. They also remembered to pay tribute to the "elegant work" of a German...