Prof. Dr. Duilio Arigoni
Duilio Arigoni, born in Lugano (TI) on December 6, 1928, studied chemistry at the ETH Zurich and carried out his doctoral thesis under the supervision of O. Jeger (1955). During his career he has always remained associated with the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, first as Privatdozent (1961), then as Associate Professor (1962) and, from 1967 until his retirement in spring 1996, as Full Professor of Special Organic Chemistry. From 1980 to 1987 he was A.D White-Professor-at-Large at Cornell University as well as Alexander Todd Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge (1981) and R.B. Woodward Visiting Professor at Harvard University (1983).
His research interests focused both on structural and biosynthetic study of organic natural products and on the mechanism and stereochemical course of selected enzymatic reactions. This work, documented in some 200 scientific publications, has earned him a number of international awards, including the Davy Medal of the Royal Society (UK), the Wolf Prize (Israel), the Arthur C. Cope Award of the American Chemical Society, and the Welch Award of the Robert A. Welch Foundation (USA).
D. Arigoni was a member of the German Academy Leopoldina (Halle), the Academia Europaea (London), and the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze, detta dei XL, (Rome), an honorary member of the Societé Chimique de France, the Società Chimica Italiana, the Royal Society of Chemistry (London), and the American Association of Arts and Sciences (Boston), a foreign member of the Royal Society (London) and a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington), and a Doctor h.c. of the Université Paris-Sud (Paris).
Prof. Arigoni died on June 10, 2020 at the age of 91.