Myron L. Bender

Myron Lee Bender (1924–1988) was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He obtained his B.S. (1944) and his Ph.D. (1948) from Purdue University. The latter was under the direction of Henry B. Hass. After postdoctoral research under Paul D. Barlett (Harvard University), and Frank H. Westheimer (University of Chicago), he spent one year as a faculty member at the University of Connecticut. Thereafter, he was a professor of Chemistry at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1951, and then at Northwestern University in 1960. He worked primarily in the study of reaction mechanisms and the biochemistry of enzyme action. Myron L. Bender demonstrated the two-step mechanism of catalysis for serine proteases, nucleophilic catalysis in ester hydrolysis and intramolecular catalysis in water. He also showed that cyclodextrin can be used to investigate catalysis of organic reactions within the scope of host-guest chemistry. Finally, he and others reported on the synthesis of an organic compound as a model of an acylchymotrypsin intermediate.

During his career, Myron L. Bender was an active member of the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society. He was elected a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford University, and to the National Academy of Sciences, the latter in 1968. He received an honorary degree from Purdue University in 1969. He was the recipient of the Midwest Award of the American Chemical Society in 1972.

Professor Bender retired from Northwestern in 1988. Both he and his wife, Muriel S. Bender, died that year. The Myron L. Bender & Muriel S. Bender Distinguished Summer Lectures in Organic Chemistry was established in their honor in 1989 and continues to be hosted by Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University.

Bender Distinguished Summer Lecturers

Lecturer	--- Year ---	Affiliation
Frederick M. Menger	1989	Emory University
Julius K. Rebek	1990	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Martin Newscomb	1991	Texas A&M University
JoAnne Stubbe	1992	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peter B. Dervan	1993	California Institute of Technology
Marye Anne Fox and James K. Whitesell	1994	University of Texas
Richard Lerner	1995	Scripps Research Institute
Jan W. Verhoeven	1996	The University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Eric N. Jacobsen	1997	Harvard University
Larry E. Overman	1998	University of California, Irvine
Ronald Breslow	1999	Columbia University
Jean Fréchet	2000	University of California, Berkeley
Dale Boger	2001	Scripps Research Institute
Andrew Hamilton	2002	Yale University
Barbara Imperiali	2003	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
François Diederich	2004	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
Erick M. Carreira	2005	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
Klaus Müllen	2006	Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research
Ben L. Feringa	2007	University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Christopher Walsh	2008	Harvard Medical School
Stephen L. Buchwald	2009	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Paul Wender	2010	Stanford University
Kendall N. Houk	2011	University of California, Los Angeles
Tom Muir	2012	Princeton University

Publications

Myron L. Bender published five books and over 230 research papers over his lifetime. He published at least 32 peer-reviewed papers while at Northwestern. Some of the most highly cited are:

• Dsouza, VT; Bender, ML. 1987. Miniature Organic-Models Of Enzymes. Accounts of Chemical Research 20 (4): 146-152.
• Komiyama, M; Bender, ML. 1978. Thermodynamic Studies Of Cyclodextrin-Accelerated Cleavage Of Phenyl Esters. Journal of the American Chemical Society 100 (14): 4576-4579.
• Komiyama, M; Bender, ML. 1978. Importance Of Apolar Binding In Complex-Formation Of Cyclodextrins With Adamantanecarboxylate. Journal of the American Chemical Society 100 (7): 2259-2260.
• Kitaura, Y; Bender, ML. 1975. Ester Hydrolyses Catalyzed By Modified Cyclodextrins. Bioorganic Chemistry 4 (3): 237-249.
• Iwakura, Y; Uno, K; Toda, F; Onozuka, S; Hattori, K; Bender, ML. 1975. Stereochemically Correct Catalytic Site On Cyclodextrin Resulting In A Better Enzyme Model. Journal of the American Chemical Society 97 (15): 4432-4434.

References

Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Brochure for the Myron L. Bender & Muriel S. Bender Distinguished Summer Lectures in Organic Chemistry, 2009.

Frank H. Westheimer, Myron L. Bender, in Biographical Memoirs, the National Academy of Sciences (includes photograph of Prof. Bender, last accessed November 28, 2009, http://www.nap.edu/readingroom.php?book=biomems&page=mbender.html)

External links

• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir