William S. Knowles (1917–2012), Nobel Laureate and Pioneer in Asymmetric Synthesis

William Standish Knowles (1917–2012), winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the oldest living Nobel chemistry laureate, died in Chesterfield, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, on June 13, 2012 of the complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, Lew Gehrig’s disease) at the age of 95. In 2001, at the age of 84, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya University, Japan; the other half was awarded to Karl Barry Sharpless of Stanford University. His life and career are reviewed with an emphasis on his contributions to the synthesis of chiral compounds directly by his use of asymmetric synthesis without the need for laborious, expensive, and wasteful optical resolutions that led to the commercial preparation of numerous crucial drugs. The objections of French proponents for the inclusion of Henri Kagan in the Nobel Prize are discussed.