Annual Seminars

B. R. Baker Lecture

Professor B.R. Baker was a Professor of Chemistry at UCSB from 1966 until his death in 1971. Baker's graduate work on the structural elucidation and synthesis of Cannabis constituents marked the beginning of a prolific career in the chemistry of natural products. He undertook many diverse projects of medicinal interest including the synthesis of antihemorrhagic vitamin K analogues, biotin derivatives, compounds with hormone activity, sulfones with activity against tuberculosis, and alkaloids. He published two books and more than 370 papers that included a series of papers on the structure and synthesis of the antimalarial alkaloid from Hydrangea that filled an entire issue of the Journal of Organic Chemistry in 1952. He determined the structure of the first known nucleoside antibiotic, puromycin, and synthesized it in 1955. This achievement came long before the discovery of the structure of transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA). Puromycin was later shown to mimic the structure of tRNA and became and an important tool of research in molecular biology. Puromycin was too toxic for cancer chemotherapy, but it aroused Bill's interest in this field. Few of the myriad of compounds that he had so meticulously synthesized showed any antitumor activity in vivo, so he sought a more rational approach to cancer chemotherapy. Perhaps his greatest contribution to medicinal chemistry was the concept of active-site-directed irreversible enzyme inhibition of substrate-identical enzymes. A monograph summarizing this approach to drug design promptly became one of the classic works in the field.

Bill's two great interests in life were his family and chemistry. He married Reba Brodsky in 1937 when he was a graduate student, and they were inseparable until the end. Their temperaments were strikingly similar; they were always cheerful, unpretentious, optimistic, and sanguine of outlook. Together with their three daughters, the Bakers were a tightly knit group whose pleasure in family life was communicated to their many friends.

Since founding the B.R. Baker Memorial Lecture and Student Fellowship in 1975, the memory of B.R. Baker has been actively kept alive by his devoted wife, Reba Baker.  On the evening of February 23, 2013, Reba Baker passed quietly in her sleep at age 95. Mother of Shari, Bonnie and Reenie, grandmother of Jeanne and Debbie, great grandmother of Win and Holt, and surrogate mother to thousands of foreign students whom she taught at UCSB from 1975 until her recent illness, her most precious connection was as wife and partner to her husband, Professor B.R. Baker.

The B.R. Baker Memorial Fellowship in Chemistry is awarded to a graduate student on the verge of graduation who has given strong indication that they will make continued and substantial contributions to the progress of organic, medicinal, or biological chemistry. Fellowship candidates are nominated by department faculty members and recipients are selected by a Department Faculty Awards Committee. Each fellow is honored at the annual B. R. Baker Memorial Lecture, and recipients receive a cash award of $500.

Past lecturers: