Kram, Donald James

Cram was born and raised in Chester, Vermont, in an immigrant family. Father of Scottish descent, mother of German descent. His father died before Krama was four years old, leaving him the only boy in a family of five. Cram grew up with the help of dependent children and started working from an early age, doing works like fruit picking, newspaper spacing, house painting, and barter to pay for piano lessons. By the age of eighteen, he managed to work on 18 different specialties. ^[12]

Cram attended Winwood High School in Long Island, New York. ^[13] From 1938 to 1941, he attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, receiving an Honorary National Fellowship. There he worked as an assistant at the chemistry department, was an active teacher, he sang in the choir, an activist Lamba Chi Alpha, a member of the Pfi Society and Zeta Alpha Alison. It was in Rollins that he became known for creating his own chemistry equipment. He graduated from Rollins with a BS in Chemistry in 1941. ^[12] In 1942 he graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with the title of MS in Organic Chemistry ^[14] , where Norman O. Cromwell was his mentor. The topic of his study is “Aminoketones, a stepwise mechanism of reactions of heterocyclic secondary amines with bromine-unsaturated ketones”. ^[15] In 1947, Krum graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. on organic chemistry, ^[14] . There he wrote his thesis "Synthesis and reactions of 2- (ketoalkyl) -3 hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinones. ^[16]

In 1942–1945, Cram worked in the Merck & Co laboratory, researching penicillin under the supervision of Max Tishler. ^{[12] The} dissertation work he conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professor John D. Roberts. He discovered the rule of asymmetric induction, or the Krum rule, which predicts the outcome of a nucleophilic attack of a carbon compound. He has published over 350 monographs and 8 books on organic chemistry. ^[12]

Cram has expanded the innovative synthesis of Charles Pedersen's crown ethers, two-dimensional organic compounds that can recognize and selectively combine with certain metal ions. Cram synthesized molecules that turned these structures into three-dimensional ones, creating a mass of molecules of various shapes that can selectively interact with other reagents due to the complementarity of their three-dimensional structure. Krama's work represents a big step forward in the synthesis: the creation of structures that mimic enzymes and other natural molecules, whose behaviors are bestowed by structural features. Cram also carried out work on stereochemistry, proposing a rule for asymmetric induction (Cram rule).

Krama's

The Krama rule opens up possibilities for asymmetric synthesis, which is a method for obtaining optically active compounds from optically inactive reagents initially. It associates the preferential configuration of the center formed during diastereoselective ketone reactions with the configuration of the center already present in the ketone molecule. The ketone reacts in conformation with the transoidal arrangement of the radical and the carbonyl group. In accordance with the Kram rule, the radical part approach is carried out by the smaller of the substituents. The Krama rule is used to correlate the configurations of alcohols formed during the reduction of ketones by complex metal hydrides, alkali metals, Na amalgam, and also in the reactions of ketones with organometallic compounds. The rule proposed in 1952.

Kram was appointed a senior lecturer at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1947, and 1955 became a professor. He served there until retirement in 1987. Krum was a popular teacher, he taught about 8,000 students in all, and was a leader with 200 graduate students. He entertained his students playing the guitar, sang folk songs. ^[14] He was distinguished by a self-critical style, saying once: “The researcher begins research in a new field with faith, a vague idea and several crazy experiments. Over time, a random combination of positive and negative results directs the work somewhere. By the time the research is completed, the researcher knows how to start and conduct it. ” ^[17]

1. Cram, Donald J. Container Molecules and their Guests. - Great Britain: Royal Society of Chemistry, 1994. - P. 223 pp ..
2. Cram, Donald J. From Design to Discovery. - Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1990. - P. 146pp.
3. Cram, Jane M. The Essence of Organic Chemistry. - Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1978. - P. 456pp.
4. Hendrickson, James B. Organic Chemistry. - Reading, Massachusetts: McGraw-Hill, 1970. - p. 1279pp. - ISBN 3rd ed ..
5. Richards, John. Elements of organic chemistry . - New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. - P. 444pp.
6. Cram, Donald J. Fundamentals of Carbanion Chemistry. - New York: Academic Press, 1965. - P. 289pp.
7. Cram, Donald J. Organic Chemistry. - New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. - P. 846pp. - ISBN 2nd ed ..
8. Cram, Donald J. Organic Chemistry. - New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959. - P. 712pp. - ISBN 1st ed ..

Member of the following academies: National Academy of Sciences of the USA (1961), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1967). Awards:

• Saul Winstein Endowed Chair in Organic Chemistry
• 1954 - Guggenheim Fellowship ^[18]
• 1965 - American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry
• 1974 - Arthur Cope Award
• 1979 - Centenary Award
• 1984 - American Chemical Society Southern California Tolman Award
• 1985 - Willard Gibbs Award
• 1987 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry ^{[17] [14] [12]}
• 1989 - Lectures 3M
• 1989 - Glenn T. Seaborg Medal
• 1992 -
• 1993 - National Science Medal of the United States ^[19]

Krum admitted that his career was not without casualties. His first wife was Jean Turner. She also graduated from Rollins, in 1941 she entered the magistracy of Columbia University, where she studied sociology. The second wife was Jane, a former professor of chemistry. Krum had no children because he believed that he could not be a good scientist and a father at the same time. ^[12] Crum died of cancer in 2001, he was 82 years old. ^[14]

• Biography on the website of the Nobel Committee. (eng.)
• Autobiography. (eng.)
• Obituary on the UCLA website. (eng.)