Ružička, Leopold

Leopold Ružička, in full Leopold Stephen Ružička, (born Sept. 13, 1887, Vukovar, Croatia, Austria-Hungary [now in Croatia]—died Sept. 26, 1976, Zürich, Switz.), Swiss chemist and joint recipient, with Adolf Butenandt of Germany, of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on ringed molecules, terpenes (a class of hydrocarbons found in the essential oils of many plants), and sex hormones.

While working as an assistant to the German chemist Hermann Staudinger, Ružička investigated the composition of the insecticides in pyrethrum (1911–16). Accompanying Staudinger to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, he became a Swiss citizen and lectured at the institute. In 1926 he became professor of organic chemistry at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and three years later he returned to Switzerland to become professor of chemistry at the Federal Institute of Technology.

Ružička’s investigations of natural odoriferous compounds, begun in 1916, culminated in the discovery that the molecules of muskone and civetone, important to the perfume industry, contain rings of 15 and 17 carbon atoms, respectively. Before this discovery, rings with more than eight atoms had been unknown and indeed had been believed to be too unstable to exist. Ružička’s discovery greatly expanded research on these compounds. He also showed that the carbon skeletons of terpenes and many other large organic molecules are constructed from multiple units of isoprene. In the mid-1930s Ružička discovered the molecular structure of several male sex hormones, notably testosterone and androsterone, and subsequently synthesized them.