Nathan Kornblum (March 22, 1914 – March 13, 1993) was a professor of Organic Chemistry and a researcher at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

. He received grants for projects from 1970 to 1983. He was born in New York City on March 22, 1914, to immigrant parents, Frances (Newmark) and Samuel Kornblum. His main research focus was electron transfer substitution reactions. His most famous work was the discovery of the

Kornblum oxidation The Kornblum oxidation, named after Nathan Kornblum, is an organic oxidation reaction that converts alkyl halides and tosylates into carbonyl compounds. Mechanism Similar to sulfonium-based oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes reactions, the ...

and also the Kornblum substitution. He was also known for

Kornblum's rule HSAB concept is a jargon for "hard and soft (Lewis) acids and bases". HSAB is widely used in chemistry for explaining stability of compounds, reaction mechanisms and pathways. It assigns the terms 'hard' or 'soft', and 'acid' or 'base' to chemic ...

in acid-base chemistry. He was the Plutonium chapter advisor for Iota Sigma Pi Honors Society for Women in Chemistry, which was established in February 1963. In 1952, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship award. He authored a chapter in an Organic Reactions textbook which was published in 2011, and wrote a review entitled "Synthetic Aspects of Electron-Transfer Chemistry" which was published in 1990 by Sigma-Aldrich.http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/etc/medialib/docs/Aldrich/Acta/al_acta_23_03.Par.0001.File.tmp/al_acta_23_03.pdf

References

20th-century American chemists 1914 births 1993 deaths Purdue University faculty {{US-chemist-stub