David A. Evans (1941-2022)

American chemist. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and, from 1983, was professor at Harvard University.

In the early 1980s he introduced the chiral oxazolidinones that bear his name as auxiliaries for asymmetric alkylations and aldol reactions, and applied them to the total synthesis of many natural products, above all polyketides.

More information: chemistry.ucla.edu