Corwin Herman Hansch (October 6, 1918 – May 8, 2011) was a professor of chemistry at

Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalists ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. He became known as the 'father of computer-assisted molecule design.'

Education and career

Hansch was born on October 6, 1918, in Kenmare, North Dakota. He earned a BS from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

in 1940 and a PhD from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 1944. He briefly worked as a postdoc at the University of Illinois Chicago. Hansch worked on the Manhattan Project at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

and as a group leader at DuPont Nemours in Richland, Washington. In February 1946 he received an academic position at

, where he taught until 1988. Hansch completed sabbaticals at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

with Vladimir Prelog and at University of Munich with Rolf Huisgen. Hansch taught

Organic Chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...

for many years at Pomona College, and was known for giving complex lectures without using notes. His course in Physical Bio-Organic Medicinal Chemistry was ground-breaking at an undergraduate level. Hansch may be best known as the father of the concept of quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR), the quantitative correlation of the physicochemical properties of molecules with their biological activities. He is also noted for the Hansch equation, which is used in *Multivariate Statistics - Multivariate statistics is a set of statistical tools to analyse data (e.g., chemical and biological) matrices using regression and/or pattern recognition techniques. *Hansch Analysis - Hansch analysis is the investigation of the quantitative relationship between the

biological activity In pharmacology, biological activity or pharmacological activity describes the beneficial or adverse effects of a drug on living matter. When a drug is a complex chemical mixture, this activity is exerted by the substance's active ingredient or ...

of a series of compounds and their physicochemical substituent or global parameters representing hydrophobic, electronic, steric and other effects using multiple regression correlation methodology. *Hansch-Fujita

\pi

constant - The Hansch-Fujita

\pi

constant describes the contribution of a substituent to the lipophilicity of a compound. Research Interests:

; Interaction of organic chemicals with living organisms, Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships (QSAR). *Fragment based regression analysis for quantitative structure-activity relationship (Hansch-analysis)

Death

He died of pneumonia on May 8, 2011, in Claremont, California, at 92.

Notes

His research group at

worked on QSAR studies and in building and expanding the database of chemical and physical data as C-QSAR and Bioloom. His postgraduate associates were Rajni Garg, Cynthia R. D. Selassie, Suresh Babu Mekapati, and Alka Kurup. The Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design carried four obituaries (as found in a Pubmed personal subject ssearch). Among his students at Pomona was Jennifer Doudna, co-recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Doudna has credited Hansch as an influence.

Bibliography

A preliminary search in WorldCat and in PubMed, two among many relevant bibliographic and citation indexes, shows the following: * Books: WorldCat shows "53 works in 204 publications in 4 languages and 2,004 library holdings" for Hansch as "author, editor, other". The top item in the list is "Exploring QSAR" by Corwin Hansch, Albert Leo and David Hoekman, an ACS professional reference book in 28 editions published between 1995 and 2014. * Journal articles: 281 Pubmed records * Reviews: authored 33 reviews as indexed in Pubmed * Title word search: 56 Pubmed records The Pomona College Archives holds reprints of Hansch's articles published between 1962 and 2009 in addition to other materials.

References

External links

Example for Hansch equation and Hansch-Fujita

\pi

constant
* ttp://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8rv0s2c/entire_text/ Corwin Hansch Collection, Pomona College Archives. Pomona College. Claremont, CA 91711br>Guide to the Corwin Hansch CollectionHansch Award of the QSAR, Cheminformatics and Modeling Society (QCMS) (previously "The QSAR and Modelling Society"), 2000-
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hansch, Corwin American pharmacologists Manhattan Project people 2011 deaths 1918 births People from Ward County, North Dakota Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni University of Illinois alumni Pomona College faculty Cheminformatics New York University alumni