Richard J. Friary collection of Woodward Research Institute materials

Richard Friary (born 1942), is a synthetic organic and medicinal chemist employed by the Schering-Plough Research Institute. Friary received his BA from Colby College in 1964, his MA from Dartmouth College in 1966, and his PhD from Fordham University in 1970. Friary worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woodward Research Institute in Basel, Switzerland from 1970 to 1973; he is one of only a few chemists to have written as many as two articles with Woodward. At the Woodward Research Institute, Friary learned medicinal chemistry by making cephalosporin C analogs as antibacterial agents, and organic synthesis through a total synthesis of prostaglandin F 2a. Friary discovered a safe and effective drug that relieves psoriasis and dermatitis. Twenty-five patents and thirty-one articles name Friary as an inventor or author.

Robert Burns Woodward (1917-1979), was an American chemist best known for his synthesis of complex organic substances, including cholesterol and cortisone (1951), strychnine (1954), and vitamin B12 (1971). In 1965, Woodward was awarded the Noble Prize for Chemistry. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1937, Woodward spent a summer at the University of Illinois, leaving in the fall to join the chemistry department at Harvard University, where he remained until his death in 1979.

Woodward founded the Woodward Research Institute at the Ciba Company (Ciba-Geigy from 1970) in Basel, Switzerland in 1963; he was its first and only director. The Institute gave Woodward the opportunity to perform original research in the field of chemical compounds or processes associated with living organisms; two of the research areas covered by the Institute were the synthesis of prostaglandins and antibiotics. Although financially supported by Ciba, the Institute was a separate entity, as symbolized by the glass door between the Institute and Ciba’s facilities. Woodward carried out his research using the battery of physical instrumentation that only a major pharmaceutical company could afford in the early 1960s. The Institute closed after Woodward’s death in 1979.