Ulrich Weiss Papers

Ulrich Weiss was born on January 24, 1908 in Praque. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Prague's German University and first worked as a chemist for the Norgine pharmaceutical company from 1930 to 1938. Because of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Weiss continued working for Norgine in France from 1938 to 1940. He emigrated to the United States in June 1941. In New York City he was a chemist for Endo Pharmaceuticals from 1941 to 1952. After brief tenures with the USPHS and the New York Botanical Garden, Weiss joined the National Institutes of Health. He was chief of the Physical Biology lab at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD), later moving to the Chemical Physics lab at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) where he remained for the rest of his career (1957-1978) and afterwards as scientist emeritus. He died in 1989.

Weiss achieved distinction in the fields of natural products chemistry, medicinal chemistry and synthetic methods. In 1955 he developed a method for synthetically transforming the analgesic Oxymorphone (marketed as Numorphan). While at NIH Weiss studied the analgesic properties of alkaloids (morphine, opium, heroin, codeine), and the synthesis of polyquinanes and polyquinenes. His interest in the biosynthesis of aromatic compounds resulted in coauthorship of a book. He was author or co-author of 130 publications.