People of ASP

William Pelletier received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering in 1947 from the Univ. Illinois. Three years later he completed a Ph.D. degree at Cornell. From 1950 to 1951, he was an instructor at the Univ. Illinois. In 1951, he joined the organic chemistry department at Rockefeller Institute in New York, and in 1962 he moved to the Univ. Georgia, where he was head of the chemistry department, rising through the ranks to the position of Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. Under his leadership, the number of chemistry faculty and chemistry students more than doubled. In 1969, he took the position of provost of the Univ. Georgia, then in the mid-1970s, he took up the directorship of the Institute of Natural Products Research, and he continued in this position until his retirement in 2000. He was a consummate natural products chemist, and he had a keen interest in isolation and structure elucidation, especially of diterpene alkaloids. For many years he edited the Alkaloids: Chemical and Biological Perspectives, a series that went into 15 volumes under his leadership from 1983 to 2001. He also was an author on more than 350 scientific manuscripts. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was also a distinguished member of the ACS, receiving the Herty Award from the Georgia Section of the ACS in 1971 and the Southern Chemist Award from the ACS Memphis Section in 1972. He also was a founding member of the Northeast Georgia Section of ACS and its first chairman in 1968. Dr. Pelletier was also an avid art collector and a published art historian. (WPJ)