Monday, April 28, 2014

A fun article on Alfred Bader

I really enjoyed this article on Alfred Bader by Linda Wang in this week's C&EN. Here's a neat tidbit:
N-Methyl-N′-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine, which was used in the preparation of diazomethane. MNNG was marketed through the company's first catalog, in 1951, a one-page document that grew to become the Aldrich Handbook. Sigma-Aldrich no longer sells MNNG, a potent mutagen and carcinogen.
Click through to watch the video on people's varying uses of the Aldrich handbook.  

3 comments:

  1. Bader actually made an appointment to come and visit me in the UK.
    I had just published an Org. Syn. prep and asked me to write a review for Aldrich Chimica Acta, which I did. As a reward I received 200 copies of that issue. I still have 199.

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  2. In fact, it’s his birthday today!

    Anyway, he’s a really remarkable individual. There are all sorts of gems like above in his autobiography.

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  3. CJ: I am not sure about you, but I met Dr. Alfred Bader in Canada during my post doctoral years . He specially enjoys interacting with graduate students and post doctoral fellows. You could pretty much say the reagent was good/or it sucks etc. He is very affable and took us out to lunch after discussing chemistry! I wasn't aware that he is a Canadian citizen and left tons of money for the Queens University, Kingston. He is down to Earth good fellow and his tribe especially during these days are very rare!

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20