Elias James Corey/科里（http://www.chem.harvard.edu/research/faculty/elias_corey.php）1928年出生，美国化学学家，哈佛大学教授，创建了独特的有机合成理论—逆合成分析理论，使有机合成方案系统化并符合逻辑。他根据这一理论编制了第一个计算机辅助有机合成路线的设计程序，于1990年获诺贝尔化学奖。
60年代科里创造了一种独特的有机合成法-逆合成分析法，为实现有机合成理论增添了新的内容。与化学家们早先的做法不同，逆合成分析法是从小分子出发去一次次尝试它们那构成什么样的分子–目标分子的结构入手，分析其中哪些化学键可以断掉，从而将复杂大分子拆成一些更小的部分，而这些小部分通常已经有的或容易得到的物质结构，用这些结构简单的物质作原料来合成复杂有机物是非常容易的。他的研究成功使塑料、人造纤维、颜料、染料、杀虫剂以及药物等的合成变得简单易行，并且是化学合成步骤可用计算机来设计和控制。
他自己还运用逆合成分析法，在试管里合成了100种重要天然物质，在这之前人们认为天然物质是不可能用人工来合成的。科里教授还合成了人体中影响血液凝结和免疫系统功能的生理活性物质等，研究成果使人们延长了寿命，享受到了更高层次的生活。 

所获得的评价：

The development of the art of organic synthesis during little over a hundred years has afforded efficient methods of manufacturing products such as plastics and other artificial fibres, paints and dyes, biocides and pharmaceutical products, all of which have contributed to the high standards of living and health, and the longevity, enjoyed at least in the Western world.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Professor Elias J. Corey, USA, for his important contributions to synthetic organic chemistry. He has developed theories and methods that have made it possible to produce a large variety of biologically highly active, complicated natural products, thereby making, among other things, certain pharmaceuticals commercially available. Corey’s work has also led to new general methods of producing, synthesising, compounds in simpler ways.

The background to Elias J. Corey’s successes lies in the fact that he has in a strictly logical way developed the principles of what is termed retrosynthetic analysis. This involves starting from the planned structure of the molecule one wishes to produce, the target molecule, and analysing what bonds must be broken, thus simplifying the structure step by step. One then finds that certain fragments are already known and their structure and synthesis already described. After working backwards in this way from the complex to the already known, it is possible to start building, synthesising, the molecule. This method has proved very amenable to data processing, which has entailed rapid developments in synthesis planning. Combining this synthesis planning with singular creativity, Corey has developed new methods of synthesis. He has produced some hundred important natural products, for example the active substance in an extract from the ginkgo tree, used in folk medicine in China.

经典著作

1、Impossible Dreams

2、The Logic of Chemical Synthesis: Multistep Synthesis of Complex