BY JOHN D. ROBERTS

WILLIAM G. YOUNG was born in Colorado Springs on July 30, 1902, and died July 5, 1980, in Laguna Hills, California. Bill Young was a physical organic chemist whose name is not now much of a household word among the current fraternity of workers in the field. There are two reasons for this. One is the fact that the major research he did was so basic to organic chemistry that it was subsumed into ''what every organic chemist knows," an arena where it is not usual for individual contributors to be identified by name. In addition, much of the work that Bill Young initiated is often now associated more with his brilliant student and fellow member of the National Academy of Sciences, Saul Winstein.¹

The second reason that Bill Young is not as well known as he might be is that he devoted enormous energy and steadfastness to making the University of California, Los Angeles, a first-rate institution in teaching and research. In this effort, another Young, Charles E. Young, UCLA's long-serving and energetic chancellor is generally given major credit, but as I shall relate, Bill Young provided critical impetus in the early days of UCLA's relatively brief history. Whether or not Bill Young would have wanted to see UCLA continue to expand to its present status as almost