Organic chemistry underwent profound changes in the second half of the twentieth century, and one of the scientists responsible for these advances was Donald J. Cram. For his studies in the area of host-guest molecules, Cram shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1987.

Donald James Cram was born April 22, 1919, in Chester, Vermont, the fourth child and only son of William and Joanna Shelley Cram, who had recently come from Ontario. The family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1921, and Cram's father died of pneumonia in 1923. In 1935, when Cram was 16, his family dispersed and he entered Winwood, a small, private school on Long Island, where he finished his high school studies in 1937.

Cram received a scholarship to Rollins College in Florida, where he earned his B.S. in 1941. He went on to receive an M.S. in chemistry at the University of Nebraska in 1942, and then spent the war years...