George Vladutz

Infobox scientist | name = George Vladutz | birth_date = 1928 | birth_place = Oradea, Romania | death_date = 1989 | fields = Chemoinformatics | workplaces = All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), University of Sheffield, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) | education = Polytechnical Institute, Bucharest; Leningrad Technological Institute; Mendeleev Institute for Chemical Technology; Institute for Organic Chemistry of the Elements, Moscow His work on reaction databases laid the foundations for computer-aided synthesis planning.

Early life and education

Born in Oradea, Romania, in 1928, Vladutz began his studies in chemical engineering at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute in 1946. He earned an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and Organic Dyestuff Chemistry from the Leningrad Technological Institute in 1952 and a Ph.D. in Organic Synthesis from the Mendeleev Institute for Chemical Technology in Moscow in 1956. His doctoral thesis was titled "The Synthesis of Bz-isoquinoline Alkaloids." In 1967, he received a D.Sc. in Chemical Information Science from the Institute for Organic Chemistry of the Elements in Moscow, with a thesis on "The Design and Development of Information Retrieval Systems for Organic Chemistry". This work has been instrumental in the development of computer-aided retrosynthetic analysis and had significant impact on the development of chemoinformatics as a discipline.

According to Ugi et al., Vladutz impacted the development of chemoinformatics from 1960 onward through his introduction of computer- and database-oriented chemical structure and reaction organization, in addition to the retrieval of same. He proposed the use of computers to develop multistep organic syntheses. These ideas were particularly influential to Elias James Corey and co-workers, who created the chemical synthesis program LHASA at the Harvard University in 1967.

Vladutz published three monographs, including "Automatic Information Systems in Chemistry" (1973), co-authored with Geyvandov, and over 70 articles.

Professional activities and recognition

He was active in the Chemical Information Division of the American Chemical Society, organizing and chairing several meetings. In 1989, he received the Patterson-Crane Award from the Dayton, OH, Branch of the American Chemical Society for his contributions to chemical information science.

Personal life

Vladutz was fluent in Romanian, Hungarian, Russian, English, French, Italian, and German. He died in 1989, leaving behind a wife and two children.