Howard E. Simmons Jr.

Howard E. Simmons Jr. (1929-1997), full name Howard Ensign Simmons Jr., was an American organic chemist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who spent his career at DuPont Central Research and Development, rising to vice president before retiring in 1992. With colleague Ronald D. Smith he discovered the Simmons-Smith reaction, a widely used method for converting alkenes into cyclopropanes, and he received the Charles Goodyear Medal in 1952 and the National Medal of Science in 1992 for his contributions to synthesis, molecular structure and the theory of organic chemistry.