Boris Weinstein

1930 – 1983

Professor Boris Weinstein, faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington since 1967, died on July 29, 1983 after a brief illness. Born in 1930 in New Orleans, Professor Weinstein received his undergraduate training at Louisiana State University. After he completed his Master’s degree at Purdue University in 1955, he served for two years as a First Lieutenant in the Air force. He took his Ph.D. under the supervision of Michael P. Cava at Ohio State University and then spent one year as a post-doctoral fellow with William G. Dauben at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to corning to Seattle, Professor Weinstein was at Stanford University for seven years.

Professor Weinstein, who was a bioorganic and organic chemist, published more than 100 papers and directed the research efforts of eight Ph.D. students during his tenure at the University of Washington. He was a dedicated educator and researcher, concentrating his research in the areas of natural products and peptides. At the time of his death, he was a co-secretary and editor of Organic Reactions and Peptides, Chemistry and Biochemistry. He has also served as editor for the last seven volumes of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Amino Acids, Peptides and Proteins.

During a three-month sabbatical in 1982, Professor Weinstein spent five weeks at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the remaining time visiting and speaking at universities and industrial firms in Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France, West Germany and Great Britain. While at the University of Padova in Italy, he received a Bronze Medal from tile Centro di Studi sui Biopolimeri. In October of 1982, he attended a meeting of the Japanese Peptide Symposium, one of two foreigners ever invited to participate in such a gathering.

Professor Weinstein was a co-founder and executive committee member of the American Peptide Symposium, and held additional memberships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, American Institute of Chemists, the American Society of Neurochemistry, New York Academy of Sciences and Sigma Xi. Over the years, he had served the Puget Sound Section of the ACS in a variety of capacities, most recently as a councilor.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and two sons, Michael and William, all of Seattle.

Adapted from various news stories by the University of Washington Department of Chemistry.

Photo Courtesy of the University of Washington