Abstract
THE fourth Pedler Lecture of the Chemical Society was delivered by Prof. Hans Fischer at the Royal Institution on February 22, his subject being the constitution of chlorophyll A. Prof. Fischer has been working on blood and leaf pigments in Munich for a number of years, and has recently synthesised hæmin, which is obtained from blood by heating with acetic acid and sodium chloride. He was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry for 1930. The lecturer dealt first with the porphyrins, a group of compounds upon which both haemin and chlorophyll are based, and which all contain a ring of four pyrrole-like nuclei. Willstätter's work has shown that substances of this type are formed in the breaking down of chlorophyll, but now many of these complex molecules have been synthesised, and the nucleus of chlorophyll is known with certainty to be an isomeric modification of the porphyrin ring. The hémin molecule has essentially the same nucleus, but different side chains. It contains two vinyl groups, which are hydrogenated to ethyl groups in chlorophyll. The latter also contains an additional ring structure, derived from β-keto propionic-acid, in place of the propionic acid side chain of the hémin molecule. In chlorophyll, a magnesium atom replaces the co-ordinately bound iron atom of hæmoglobin. The final formulation of the structure of the chlorophyll molecule has entailed an enormous amount of synthetic organic chemistry of the utmost complexity. The brilliant manner in which Prof. Fischer and his co-workers have carried it out makes one confident that they will ultimately succeed in the synthesis of chlorophyll itself.
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Structure of Chlorophyll A. Nature 133, 321 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133321b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133321b0
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