Elias James Corey

Elias James Corey, widely known as E. J. Corey, is an American organic chemist born July 12, 1928, in Methuen, Massachusetts. He won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the theory and methodology of organic synthesis, in particular retrosynthetic analysis, a systematic way of working backward from a target molecule's structure to simpler starting materials that transformed how chemists plan the synthesis of complex natural products and drugs. Corey spent his career at Harvard University, where by the time of his Nobel award he had trained roughly seven hundred students and postdoctoral researchers, and he remains an emeritus professor there.