ST. LOUIS — William S. Knowles, 95, a longtime chemist at Monsanto Co. in St. Louis who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry, has died, his daughter said Monday.
Knowles, of the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo., died Wednesday. His daughter, Lesley McIntire of Kirkwood, Mo., said he died of complications from ALS.
Knowles retired from Monsanto in 1986 after 44 years with the company. It was 15 years later that he and two other scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for work that led to discoveries now used to make various medicines, including antibiotics, heart drugs and widely used treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
The Nobel was the last thing on his mind when Knowles, then 84, was awakened at 4 a.m. in October 2001 by a caller from Sweden telling him he won a share of the prize.
“It just kind of overwhelmed me. I made sure it wasn’t a joke,” Knowles said at the time.
Knowles was born in Massachusetts in 1917 and earned a degree in chemistry from Harvard in 1939, then a graduate degree from Columbia three years later. He joined Monsanto in 1942.
In 1968, Knowles found a way to produce the helpful form of the amino acid L-dopa, which is used to treat Parkinson’s. He and other researchers overcame a key problem in making drugs: The molecules of many substances used as drugs come in two forms that are mirror images of each other. Only one of these forms is helpful
.
The three men developed chemical catalysts to produce only the useful form of such molecules.
As a result, drugs are more potent and lack the side effects that the other form of the molecule would cause.
