Robert E. Ireland (1929 – February 4, 2012) was an American chemist and the Thomas Jefferson Chair Professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia.
He is known for his textbook Organic Synthesis[1] and his contributions to the Ireland–Claisen rearrangement chemical reaction.
in chemistry in 1951 at Amherst College and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1954 from the University of Wisconsin with William Summer Johnson, and did his postdoctoral work at UCLA with William Gould Young.
In 1985 he became the director of the Merrell Dow Research Institute in Strasbourg, France.
[3][5][6] Ireland was married to wife Margaret and had two sons, Mark and Robert.