Elias James Corey

As of 2010, approximately 700 people have been Corey Group members including notable students Eric Block, Dale L. Boger, Weston T. Borden, David E. Cane, Rick L. Danheiser, William L. Jorgensen, John Katzenellenbogen, Alan P. Kozikowski, Bruce H. Lipshutz, David R. Liu, Albert Meyers, K. C. Nicolaou, Ryōji Noyori, Gary H. Posner, Bengt I. Samuelsson, Dieter Seebach, Vinod K. Singh, Brian Stoltz, Hisashi Yamamoto, and Jin-Quan Yu. A database of 580 former members and their current affiliation was developed for Corey's 80th birthday in July 2008.

When awarded the Priestley Medal in 2004, E. J. Corey created a controversy with his claim to have inspired Robert Burns Woodward prior to the development of the Woodward–Hoffmann rules. Corey wrote:

Jason Altom, one of Corey's students, committed suicide in 1998. Altom's suicide caused controversy because he explicitly blamed Corey, his research advisor, for his suicide. Altom cited in his 1998 farewell note "abusive research supervisors" as one reason for taking his life. Altom's suicide note also contained explicit instructions on how to reform the relationship between students and their supervisors.

Corey was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1998.

Among numerous honors, Corey was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1988, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1990, and the American Chemical Society's greatest honor, the Priestley Medal, in 2004.

Altom was the third member of Corey's lab to commit suicide since 1980. Corey was reportedly devastated and bewildered by his student's death. Corey said, "That letter doesn't make sense. At the end, Jason must have been delusional or irrational in the extreme." Corey also claimed he never questioned Altom's intellectual contributions. "I did my best to guide Jason as a mountain guide would to guide someone climbing a mountain. I did my best every step of the way," Corey states. "My conscience is clear. Everything Jason did came out of our partnership. We never had the slightest disagreement." The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) cited The New York Times article on Altom's suicide as an example of problematic reporting, arguing that Altom presented warning signs of depression and suicidal ideation and that the article had scapegoated Corey despite a lack of secondary evidence that the advisor's behavior had contributed to Altom's distress. According to The Boston Globe reporting, students and professors said Altom actually retained Corey's support.

Corey's claim and contribution were publicly rebutted by Roald Hoffmann in the journal Angewandte Chemie. In the rebuttal, Hoffmann states that he asked Corey over the course of their long discussion of the matter why Corey did not make the issue public. Corey responded that he thought such a public disagreement would hurt Harvard and that he would not "consider doing anything against Harvard, to which I was and am so devoted." Corey also hoped that Woodward himself would correct the historical record "as he grew older, more considerate, and more sensitive to his own conscience." Woodward died suddenly of a heart attack in his sleep in 1979.

Usually TBS ethers are severed by TBAF, but the hindered TBS ether above survives the reaction conditions upon primary TIPS removal (scheme 5). The MEM protecting group was first described by Corey in 1976. This protecting group is similar in reactivity and stability to other alkoxy methyl ethers under acidic conditions. Cleavage of MEM protecting groups is usually accomplished under acidic conditions, but coordination with metal halides greatly enhances lability via assisted cleavage (scheme 6).

E.J. Corey has received more than 40 major awards including the Linus Pauling Award (1973), Franklin Medal (1978), Tetrahedron Prize (1983), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1986), National Medal of Science (1988), Japan Prize (1989), Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1990), Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1991), Roger Adams Award (1993), and the Priestley Medal (2004). He was inducted into the Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame in 1998. As of 2008, he has been awarded 19 honorary degrees from universities around the world including Oxford University (UK), Cambridge University (UK), and National Chung Cheng University. In 2013, the E.J. Corey Institute of Biomedical Research (CIBR) opened in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China.

His 1969 total syntheses of several prostaglandins are considered classics. Specifically the synthesis of Prostaglandin F2α presents several challenges. The presence of both cis and trans olefins as well as five asymmetric carbon atoms renders the molecule a desirable challenge for organic chemists. Corey's retrosynthetic analysis outlines a few key disconnections that lead to simplified precursors (scheme 23).

"On May 4, 1964, I suggested to my colleague R. B. Woodward a simple explanation involving the symmetry of the perturbed (HOMO) molecular orbitals for the stereoselective cyclobutene → 1,3-butadiene and 1,3,5-hexatriene → cyclohexadiene conversions that provided the basis for the further development of these ideas into what became known as the Woodward–Hoffmann rules."

This was Corey's first public statement on his claim that starting on May 5, 1964 Woodward put forth Corey's explanation as his own thought with no mention of Corey and the conversation of May 4. Corey had discussed his claim privately with Hoffmann and close colleagues since 1964. Corey mentions that he made the Priestley statement "so the historical record would be correct".

Several reactions developed in Corey's lab have become commonplace in modern synthetic organic chemistry. At least 302 methods have been developed in the Corey group since 1950. Several reactions have been named after him:

E. J. Corey and his research group have completed many total syntheses. At least 265 compounds have been synthesized in the Corey group since 1950.

At the age of 16 Corey entered MIT, where he earned both a bachelor's degree in 1948 and a Ph.D. under Professor John C. Sheehan in 1951. Upon entering MIT, Corey's only experience with science was in mathematics, and he began his college career pursuing a degree in engineering. After his first chemistry class in his sophomore year he began rethinking his long-term career plans and graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. Immediately thereafter, at the invitation of Professor John C. Sheehan, Corey remained at MIT for his Ph.D. After his graduate career he was offered an appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he became a full professor of chemistry in 1956 at the age of 27. He was initiated as a member of the Zeta chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma at the University of Illinois in 1952. In 1959, he moved to Harvard University, where he is currently an emeritus professor of organic chemistry with an active Corey Group research program. He chose to work in organic chemistry because of "its intrinsic beauty and its great relevance to human health". He has also been an advisor to Pfizer for more than 50 years.

Elias James Corey (born July 12, 1928) is an American organic chemist. In 1990, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis", specifically retrosynthetic analysis. Regarded by many as one of the greatest living chemists, he has developed numerous synthetic reagents, methodologies and total syntheses and has advanced the science of organic synthesis considerably.