Fieser was born in
Columbus, Ohio, obtained his BA in chemistry in 1920 from
Williams College, and his PhD under
James Bryant Conant at Harvard in 1924. His graduate research concerned the measurement of
oxidation potentials in
quinone oxidation. in 1924-1925 Fieser worked at the
University of Oxford with
W.H. Perkin Jr. and with
Julius von Braun at the
Frankfurt University as a postdoc. Between 1925 and 1930 he worked at
Bryn Mawr College where he met his future wife. He then moved to
Harvard University. With his research assistant and wife
Mary Peters Fieser (MA, 1936, Radcliffe) he coauthored eight books and the first seven volumes of the classic series
Reagents for Organic Synthesis known popularly among chemists as "Fieser and Fieser". He was also an editor and contributor for
Organic Syntheses. At Harvard University, Fieser was a well-loved faculty member widely known for using inventive methods to educate his students, such as demonstrating "How NOT to Perform a Recrystallization" (in which he allowed a flask of charcoal to overflow and create a mess of his desk and himself). Fieser even produced a $28,000 educational film to supplement his organic chemistry lecture. As part of a scene in which Fieser demonstrated how cholesterol could be experimentally isolated from gall stones, the film featured a shot of a collection of oversized and rare gall stones from Boston-area hospitals. Notably, Fieser's students appreciated his efforts so much that they sold orange "Louie" sweatshirts branded with Fieser's face in Harvard Square, one of which was worn by Fieser himself to lecture one day. Fieser had two chemical reagents named for him. ''Fieser's reagent
is a mixture of chromium trioxide in acetic acid. Fieser's solution'' is an aqueous solution of
potassium hydroxide,
sodium hydrosulfite, and sodium anthraquinone β-sulfonate used for the removal of
oxygen from a gas stream.
Woodward's rules for calculating UV absorption maxima are also known as the Woodward-Fieser rules. He was the first to propose the existence of
iceane. In 1939 Fieser was involved in a competitive race for the structure elucidation of
Vitamin K and he was able to report its synthesis in the end of that year. According to a recent
in memoriam Fieser was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1933, the United States
National Academy of Sciences in 1940, and the
American Philosophical Society in 1941. During World War II Fieser was partly responsible for a military experiment that went disastrously awry.
Project X-ray was a scheme to drop a great number of bats with small incendiary charges with a timed fuse attached over Japan to start widespread fires. After the bats nested in housing and factories, the timed fuses would ignite the incendiary charges (napalm) and start the fires. During a test run, a number of the bats escaped and ignited
Carlsbad Airfield's hangars, barracks, and a general's car. "The accidental incineration of Carlsbad Auxiliary Army Airfield by incendiary bats was both a high and a low for Project X-Ray." Fieser omitted the account of the fires from his own account of the bat tests.
Dow Chemical began producing his formula for napalm during
World War II. The use of napalm during the
Vietnam War stirred controversy. Fieser, however, was unapologetic for its creation. He stated, "I have no right to judge the morality of napalm just because I invented it." In 1962 he served on the ''U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee'' that in 1964 issued a report on the relationship between
smoking and health. Fieser was a
chain smoker, and only after he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1965 and recovered did he quit the habit and start to actively promote the committee's conclusions. Fieser was the graduate advisor of 1987
Nobel laureate
Donald J. Cram. == Notes ==