Henry Rapoport Papers, 1936-2003

Summary

Creators:

Rapoport, Henry

Abstract:

The Henry Rapoport Papers, 1936-2003, consist of correspondence, writings, reports, and research materials spanning Rapoport's distinguished career in organic chemistry from the 1940s to his death in 2002. The bulk of the collection includes correspondence and reports generated by Rapoport and his post doctoral research associates in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Also included are materials relating to his research and consulting work in the private sector and a small amount of personal papers.

Extent:

23 cartons, 1 oversize box 29.15 linear ft.

Language:

English

Background

Scope and content:

The Henry Rapoport Papers, 1936-2002, consist of correspondence, writings, reports, and research materials spanning Rapoport's distinguished career in organic chemistry from the 1940s until his death in 2002. The bulk of the collection is made up of correspondence and quarterly reports generated by Rapoport and his post doctoral research associates in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Also included are materials relating to Rapoport's private sector research and consulting work and a small amount of personal papers.

The collection has been divided into seven series: Correspondence, Writings, University of California, Berkeley, Private Sector Research and Consulting, Research Files, Professional Affiliations, and Personal Papers. Professor Rapoport's correspondence consists primarily of letters to and from colleagues in the field of chemistry and pertains almost exclusively to his research. Writings include papers and lectures regarding his work in the areas of synthesis and the chemistry of marine organisms, heterocyclic compounds, and carcinogens as well as materials relating to his book Laboratory Text in Organic Chemistry, which he co-authored with James Cason.

At UC, Berkeley Professor Rapoport was most noted for his reputation as instructor and mentor to hundreds of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom went on to distinguished careers of their own in chemical and biotechnological research. The series University of California, Berkeley includes correspondence with these students, as well as the quarterly research reports generated by his laboratory team over a 40-year period. Only a small amount of administrative material related to the Department of Chemistry can be found in this collection.

Throughout his career, Rapoport was sought out as a consultant in the medicinal and pharmaceutical research industries. These contributions are documented in the Private Sector Research series and include files from the many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies he worked for. General Research Files include materials related to Professor Rapoport's research both at UC Berkeley and in the private sector.

There are only a small amount of personal papers in the collection, chiefly course notes from his student days at M.I.T. and a scrapbook documenting his education, career, and family life compiled by his wife, Sonya Rapoport.

Biographical / historical:

Henry Rapoport was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 16, 1918. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a B.S. in chemistry in 1936 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1943. After graduation, Rapoport worked for the Heyden Chemical Corporation, where he researched the isolation, structure elucidation, and synthesis of penicillin. He left Heyden in 1945 after receiving a National Research Council Fellowship to study the synthesis of morphine derivatives at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

In 1946, Rapoport was appointed Instructor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1948, Associate Professor in 1953, and finally to Professor in 1957. While at Berkeley, Rapoport taught undergraduate chemistry courses required for students in the premedical and Life Sciences majors, as well as graduate level courses in natural products chemistry. Rapoport trained over 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry research over his 55 years of service to the university. In over 400 research projects, Rapoport and his laboratory teams made significant contributions in the chemistry of morphinan alkaloids, paralytic shellfish poison (called saxitoxin), heterocyclic compounds, biological pigments, antibiotics, and anti-tumor compounds.

In addition to teaching, Rapoport co-authored, along with James Cason, a book entitled Laboratory Text in Organic Chemistry, which was used in college and university laboratory classes for over 30 years. Over the course of his career, he published over 400 articles, continuing to write well after his retirement from the university.

Rapoport worked as a consultant in the private sector, serving many well-known medicinal research laboratories, including Dupont Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and MitoKor. In the 1970s, Rapoport and his colleague John Hearst developed psoralens, natural products that can be used for the deactivation of viruses. This research led to the formation of the Cerus Corporation.

Rapoport served as Associate Editor of The Journal of Organic Chemistry and was a member of the Medicinal Chemistry Study Section of the National Institutes of Health. Among the numerous awards and fellowships he received during his career were a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 and the Research Achievement Award in Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry from the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1972. Professor Rapoport was also made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Professor Rapoport retired from UC Berkeley in 1989 and was awarded the Berkeley Citation in 1997. He died on March 6, 2002 in Oakland, California.

Acquisition information:

The Henry Rapoport Papers were given to The Bancroft Library by Mrs. Sonya Rapoport on September 30, 2002.

Physical location:

For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.

Location of this collection:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US

Contact:

510-642-6481

bancref-library@berkeley.edu

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