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Dr. Ralph Hirschmann - 2004
Ralph Hirschmann is the Rao Makineni Professor of
Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He has made seminal
contributions to organic, medicinal and bioorganic chemistry for over fifty
years. A naturalized American citizen, born in Bavaria, Germany, he came to the
US in his teens and earned a B.A. degree from Oberlin College in 1943. Following
three years of military service during World War II, he entered graduate school
at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), where he received a Ph.D. degree under
the mentorship of Professor William S. Johnson in 1950.
Dr. Hirschmann joined the Merck Research Laboratories in 1950 as a process
research chemist and retired in 1987, having served as Senior Vice President of
Chemistry and of Basic Research. During his tenure, his team discovered and/or
developed several major drugs including Vasotec, Lisinopril, Primaxin, Ivomec,
Mevacor and Proscar. Early in his career (1952), he discovered the steroidal
C-nor-D-homo rearrangement. During the 1960s, with Robert G. Denkewalter, he
directed the first solution total synthesis of an enzyme, ribonuclease S (RNase
S).
In 1987, Dr. Hirschmann started a second career at the University of
Pennsylvania, where he initiated collaborative research in the field of
peptidomimetics. The collaborations with biologists in the pharmaceutical
industry were critical for the success of this research. The Penn teams have
published 63 papers, mostly describing new approaches to the design of
peptidomimetics and (with Benkovic) of haptens for the generation of catalytic
antibodies.
Dr. Hirschmann has been recognized with three honorary degrees and three endowed
lectureships; three chairs are linked to his name. He has received recognition
through many awards including the Merck & Co. Inc. Board of Directors Scientific
Award and the National Academy of Sciences Award for the Industrial Application
of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Senior Fellow
of the Institutes of Medicine of the National Academies, and a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Mendel Medal Presentation Program, March 13, 2004. Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania.
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