Dr. Raymond U. Lemieux was born in
Lac La Biche, Alberta, Canada. His family moved to
Edmonton,
Alberta in 1926. He studied chemistry at the
University of Alberta and received a BSc with Honours in Chemistry in 1943. He went on to study at
McGill University, where he received his PhD in
Organic Chemistry in 1946. He won a post-doctoral
scholarship at
Ohio State University, where
Bristol Laboratories Inc. sponsored his research on the structure of
streptomycin. He met his future wife, a doctoral student, at Ohio State and they were married in 1948. In following years, he returned to Canada where he spent two years as an
assistant professor at the
University of Saskatchewan. Next he served as Senior Research Officer at the
National Research Council's
Prairie Regional Laboratory in
Saskatoon. In 1953 he and a fellow researcher, George Huber, were the first scientists to successfully synthesize
sucrose. In 1954, he accepted the position of
Dean in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the
University of Ottawa, where he established their Department of Chemistry. In 1961 he returned to the University of Alberta as a professor in the Chemistry Department and to serve as the chairman of the Organic Chemistry Division. He developed a method to make synthetic versions of
oligosaccharides, which led to improved treatments for
leukemia and
hemophilia and the development of new
antibiotics,
blood reagents, and
organ anti-rejection drugs. While at the University of Alberta, he established a number of biochemical companies, including R&L Molecular Research Ltd. in 1962, Raylo Chemicals Ltd. in 1966 (which purchased R&L) and Chembiomed in 1977 (which has since been taken over by Synsorb Biotech of
Calgary, Alberta.) Prof. Lemieux published an autobiography, entitled "
Explorations with Sugars: How Sweet It Was," in 1990. Dr. Raymond Lemieux died of an aneurysm in 2000. In 1999, the
University of Alberta Faculty of Science and
Strathcona County established the Strathcona County/R.U. Lemieux Chair in Carbohydrate Chemistry. In 2001, the University of Alberta renamed the building(s) housing the Department of Chemistry to the Gunning/Lemieux Chemistry Centre to acknowledge the contributions of Profs. Raymond Lemieux and
Harry Gunning. ==Awards==