Ernest L. Eliel

Ernest Ludwig Eliel (December 28, 1921 to September 18, 2008) was an organic chemist born in Cologne, Germany, who fled Nazi Germany as a young man and studied in Scotland, Canada, and Cuba before earning his degree at the University of Havana in 1946. He taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1948 and later at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he held the W. R. Kenan Jr. professorship of chemistry until his retirement in 1993. His research on the stereochemistry and conformational analysis of organic molecules was set out in his widely used textbook Stereochemistry of Carbon Compounds, and he served as president of the American Chemical Society in 1992 and received the Priestley Medal in 1996.