Donald J. Peterson (1935-2019)

American chemist, born in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry at Iowa State University with Henry Gilman, one of the pioneers of organometallic chemistry.

He spent his whole career at the Procter & Gamble research laboratories in Ohio, where he was Director of Corporate Research from 1979 to 1994. In 1968 he published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry the olefination of carbonyl compounds with α-silyl carbanions, the Peterson reaction, and he is credited with coining the term “olefination”. He held 33 patents.

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