As R.B. Woodward’s youngest daughter and artist, I have a unique insight into father’s artistic mastery of synthesis. Already in 1965, the Nobel Prize gave recognition to Woodward’s work for his “contributions to the art of organic synthesis”. After my father died, I was involved in assuring that his hundreds of chemical drawings, in working out synthetic pathways, would be conserved in the Harvard University Archives. The beauty of the structures, the precision and elegance of the drawings, surely qualify this work as “art”. Yet beyond that it is the psychology of the creative thinking which spoke through these drawings, and which I wrote about and published in the book, “Creative People At Work” (1989 Oxford U.P.). I shall focus on Woodward’s art as an art of structures and of transformations, 3-dimensionality, and beauty. As artist myself and daughter, I shall bring in some personal reflections, and parallels with other art forms, as well. In a lecture in 1963, at Ciba-Geigy Laboratories in India, my father referred to the “delectation” which he experienced in his work, and to this as being inaccessible to the “non-initiated”, non-chemists. In citing some key themes in his work, might we ask, now, years after Woodward left the chemistry arena, are such “delectations” still part of the work of chemists today? And in turn, can non-chemists key into the pleasure and art of this master of synthesis? Further, themes in Woodward’s work call for and inspire an art-science dialogue and mutual understanding more generally.

Robert Burns Woodward: Bridging art and science

254th National Meeting (2017)

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