David Adriaan van Dorp

David 'Davy' Adriaan van Dorp (April 27, 1915 in Amsterdam – February 19, 1995 in Vlaardingen) was a Dutch chemist.

Van Dorp was born as the son of Hendrik van Dorp and Maria van Dorp, and studied chemistry in Amsterdam where he received a PhD for his thesis Aneurine en gistphosphatase in 1941.

In 1946, while employed by the Dutch company Organon in Oss, Van Dorp and Jozef Ferdinand Arens ('Coco') (1914-2001) published the synthesis for vitamin A acid in the scientific journal Nature.^[1] In 1947, they completed the first full synthesis for the complex compound vitamin A, by taking the final step and turning the acid in an alcohol.^[2] Their synthesis was not to be used for commercial production, as an alternative route that was published soon after by Otto Isler (1910-1992) and co-workers at (Hoffmann-La Roche) turned out to be much more suited for upscaling.^{[citation needed]}

Van Dorp joined the Unilever Research Laboratory in Vlaardingen in 1959, and was a key person in the studies regarding the role of arachidonic acid in the metabolic pathway to prostaglandin E2, in close cooperation with Sune K. Bergström who would later receive a Nobel prize for his work on prostaglandins.

In 1973 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[3]

• O. Isler, W. Huber, A. Ronco, M. Kofler, Helv. Chim. Acta 30, 1911-1927 (1947)
• D.A. van Dorp, R.K. Beerthuis, D.H. Nugteren, H. Vonkeman, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 90, 204-207 (1964)
• S. Bergström, H. Danielsson, B. Samuelsson, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 90, 207-210 (1964)
• D.A. van Dorp, My years in lipid research, Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society 60, 1645-1648 (1983)

• Bergströms scientific biography