Edward Burgess

Edward Meredith Burgess (born 1934 in Birmingham) is an organic chemist, known for developing the "Burgess reagent", used to convert alcohols into alkenes.

Burgess attended Shades Valley High School and won a science award during his senior year in 1951. During the summers he worked as a helper in the biochemistry department of the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham. Under the tutelage of William Pigman performing research on "The Anhydrous Reaction of Nitrogen Dioxide with some Selected Sugars". He was awarded an NROTC scholarship to attend Auburn University, where he majored in both chemistry and physics. He continued to perform research as an undergraduate with Frank Stevens on the synthesis of indole derivatives and with Howard Carr on the construction of a mass spectrometer. He completed his bachelor of science, cum laude, in 1956.

After leaving Auburn, Burgess served as an officer on the Navy Destroyer U. S. S. Stormes (DD-780) from 1956 to 1959. After his discharge he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a member of George Hermann Büchi's research group, studying synthetic organic compounds and photo chemicals. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "Photochemical isomerization of eucarvone and cyclooctatrienone; Studies toward the synthesis of samandarin." He also published numerous papers on other topics, including the epoxidation of chloestadienone.

Burgess has taught at Yale University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

References

• "Edward M. Burgess" (July 4, 2013) Wikipedia - accessed July 4, 2013