Wolfgang Oppolzer, Ph.D.

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Wolfgang Oppolzer was born in Vienna, Austria, on August 4, 1937 and died in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 15, 1996.
Following his undergraduate studies at the University of Vienna, Wolfgang Oppolzer moved to Zurich in 1960 and joined the group of Prof. V. Prelog at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). Working on the structures of rifamycines, he obtained his doctorate in 1964. See: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/133994
This was followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard University with Prof. E.J. Corey studying sulfur ylids, and two years in Basel in the Woodward Research Institute under Prof. R.B. Woodward where he worked on the synthesis of cephalosporin.
In 1967 he joined the Sandoz company as a research chemist and worked on heterocyclic nitrogen compounds. In the course of these studies he started his work on intramolecular cycloadditions. His use of orthoquinodimethane in an intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction, as a key step in the synthesis of chelidonine, (1971) was a striking achievement. The elegance and efficiency of this reaction and his imaginative use of this strategy in the synthesis of steroids, (-)-pumiliotoxin-C, norpatchoulenol, himachalenes and lysergic acid rapidly earned him a high international reputation in the field of organic synthesis. This work was carried out at the University of Geneva where he had joined the faculty in 1974 and had became full professor the following year.
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