Vladimir Prelog

Early life

Prelog was born in Sarajevo, Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that time within Austria-Hungary, to Croat parents who were working there. His father, Milan, a native of Zagreb, was a history professor at a gymnasium in Sarajevo and later at the University of Zagreb.

Zürich In 1941, in the midst of World War II, Prelog was invited to lecture in Germany by Richard Kuhn. Shortly afterwards, Lavoslav Ružička, whom Prelog asked for help, invited Prelog to visit him on his way to Germany. He and his wife used those invitations to escape to Zürich in Switzerland. With Ružička's help, he gained support from CIBA Ltd. and started to work in the Organic Chemistry Laboratory in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, or Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule). Prelog was able to separate the chiral enantiomers of Tröger's base in 1944 by chromatography on an optically active substrate.

With this chiral resolution, he was able to prove that not only carbon but also nitrogen atoms can be the chiral centre in a molecule, which had been speculated for several years. His relationship with Ružička helped him climb up the academic hierarchical ladder. Starting as an assistant, he became Privat-Dozent, Titularprofessor, associate professor, and in 1952 full professor. In 1957 he succeeded Ružička as head of the Laboratory. Since Prelog disliked administrative duties, he implemented rotating chairmanship in the ETH. and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1961.

Prelog was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1962 for his contribution to the development of modern stereochemistry. for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reaction, sharing it with the Australian/British research chemist John Cornforth.

In 1986, he became an honorary member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. Prelog was also a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Personal life In 1933, Prelog married Kamila Vitek.