The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1965 was awarded to Robert B. Woodward "for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis".
 

Robert Woodward could achieve in the field by successfully synthesizing a series of natural products of a complexity never before seen. The hallmarks of Woodward's approach were his remarkable ability to select the best starting materials to create the major structural elements of the final compound, and to select the correct chemical reactions out of the many available that could help him stitch the starting materials together in the correct manner. Most notably, Woodward synthesized the chemical quinine used in the treatment of malaria, the steroids cholesterol and cortisone, the infamous poison strychnine, the tranquilizing drug reserpine, and chlorophyll, the green plant pigment crucial for photosynthesis.