William Standish Knowles

“For me, the chemistry of living things has always been the most interesting, and it remains so.”

“Basically, my mother and father were the first people to encourage me.”

“My contribution was to show that you could do it, that you could get a commercial process that would make a single isomer in high yield.”

“The world has become a very complicated place, and it's not well-served by people who have very simple answers.”

“I feel that this award is not for me, but for the entire Monsanto team that worked on asymmetric hydrogenation.”

“We kind of stumbled on it, but we were smart enough to realize what we had and pursue it.”