Marshall D. Gates Jr.

From 1941 to 1949 he taught at Bryn Mawr College at which point he moved to the University of Rochester where he remained until his retirement in 1981.

From 1943 to 1946 he did work for the National Defense Council and served as editor in chief of the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1949 to 1969.

[1] Gates's total synthesis of morphine was the first of its kind and an important confirmation of the structural determination made by Robert Robinson some 27 years prior.

[3] The key step was a high-pressure Diels-Alder reaction with butadiene that established the fused ring system core.

Reductive coupling between the hydroxyl and cyano groups furnished the ethylamine bridge and further elaboration (including an arduous epimerization of the highlighted stereocenter) established the so-called "Gates Intermediate."