Wittig: Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind

The 1979 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded jointly to Georg Wittig of the University of Heidelberg and Herbert C. Brown of Purdue University for their separate work in organic synthesis. Wittig's major achievement was the development of a highly specific method for the synthesis of olefins. Brown found major new routes to add substituents to olefins selectively. Both employed elements that had found little previous use in organic synthesis, and both prospered by following up on unexpected observations.