Vladimir Prelog; Nobel-Winning Swiss Chemist

Vladimir Prelog, 91, Swiss chemist who shared a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work that helped develop pharmaceuticals. Prelog, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and John Warcup Cornforth of the University of Sussex in England shared the chemistry prize in 1975 for their examination of what is known as stereochemistry. They studied the effects on chemical compounds created by the three-dimensional arrangement of their atoms, particularly the molecules cholesterol and antibiotics. Born in Sarajevo, Prelog earned his doctorate at the Institute of Technology and School of Chemistry in Prague and began his work there. He later taught organic chemistry at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, and from 1942 until his retirement in 1976 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Prelog frequently spoke in the United States and in 1961 was elected a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also elected to the Royal Academy of Britain. On Jan. 7 in Zurich.