| RefNo | EC/1991/41 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Arigoni, Duilio: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Date | 1990 |
| Description | Certificate of Candidate for Election to Foreign Membership. Citation typed |
| Citation | Arigoni is a bioorganic chemist whose work is unmatched in the world for its intellectual elegance, experimental ingenuity, and conceptual unambiguity. His early research on the biosynthesis of mevalonoid compounds led to the establishment of the 'biogenetic isoprene rule', that brought order and logic to a mass of biosynthetic phenomenology. This work was followed by a long sequence of penetrating and challenging experiments that evaluated the routes by which nature assembles a wide range of metabolites. Typical of the extraordinary intellectual depth of Arigoni's design of experiments was the development of the 'chiral methyl' methodology, in which methyl groups, chiral by virtue simply of the three isotopes of hydrogen, were synthesized and stereochemically analyzed. These experiments led Arigoni more deeply into stereochemical and mechanistic investigations at the enzyme level, this work running alongside his continuing concern with the deconvolution of the routes by which terpenes, alkaloids, steroids, and corrins are synthesized in plants, in moulds, and in microorganisms. His interest in the biosynthesis of vitamin B-12 and (concomitantly) in the mechanisms of the enzymic reactions that require it, has contributed heavily both to our understanding and to the asking of deeper and more intimate questions about the paths followed by organic molecules as they rearrange.
Whether Arigoni studies the mechanism of methylmalonyl-CoA-mutase or a pyridoxal phosphate-dependent enzyme such as aspartate aminotransferase, or whether he investigates the origin of the three-membered ring in cycloartenol or the biosynthesis of the plant hormone ethylene, he brings a formidable and imaginative intellect to bear upon the problem. After Arigoni has looked at a problem, the world sees it afresh, begins to ask questions approaching the subtlety of those he has framed, and starts to shape more informative experiments. Arigoni's interests in chemistry and biochemistry are wide-ranging, and his intellectual leadership continues as a standard against which the world's bioorganic community measures itself. His effervescent personality and his intellectual ebullience makes his influence remarkable and profound. |
| AccessStatus | Closed |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA4732 | Arigoni; Duilio (1928 - 2020) | 1928 - 2020 |