Ronald Breslow

Ronald Charles David Breslow (March 14, 1931 to October 25, 2017) was an American chemist from Rahway, New Jersey, who spent his career as a University Professor at Columbia University, teaching there from 1956 and chairing its chemistry department. A student of Robert Burns Woodward, he became known for his synthesis of the cyclopropenyl cation, an early demonstration of aromatic stability in a three-membered ring, and for studies of how the vitamin thiamin diphosphate promotes its biochemical reactions. His research on cyclodextrin molecules as enzyme mimics led him toward medicinal chemistry, and he co-discovered the histone deacetylase inhibitor that became the cancer drug vorinostat, marketed as SAHA and used to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.