Alfonso Romo de Vivar y Romo, Mexican organic chemist (San Francisco de los Romos, Aguascalientes 30 April 1928 –

Authored over 170 works

Studied molecular structures of natural products from Mexican flora and discovered new chemicals from them

Discovered, isolated and described at least 110 new plant chemicals

Regarded as a world leading authority on sesquiterpenic lactones

Proposed biogenetical relationships of certain subgroups of natural products

Isolated and determined chemicals as mexicanines A, B and C (1959-61), zaluzanines (1967) and franserine (1968)

With J. Romo & A. Ortega. Novel sequiterpenes isolated in Compositae. Rec. Adv. Phytochem. (1973)

With J. Romo. Mexicanin E. A norsesquiterpenoid lactone. J. Am. Chem. Soc. (1961) (a new type of sesquiterpenoid lactones)

First to isolate maturone acetate as a natural product

With A. Arciniegas, A.L. Pérez Castorena & J.L. Villaseñor. Furanoeremophilane derivatives from Psacalium beamani (2004)

Described the existence of a new type of carbon skeleton

With D. Nieto, R. Gaviño & C. Lidia. Isocapnell-9-en-8-one- and 6αhydroxyisocapnell-9-em-8one-sesquiterpenes from Buddleia species. Phytochem. 40(1):167-70, 1995

Discovered a new structural type

With A.L. Perez, H. Flores & M. Jimenez Estrada. Confertdiolide, a novel sesquiterpenoid lactone from Parthenium. Phytochemistry 17(2):279-80, 1978

Discovered that seeds of many species from genus Yucca had steroidal glycosides (1975-7) and showed that their oils were edible

Patented a method for synthesizing natural steroids of pharmaceutical importance from Yucca sp. (Mexican Patent 139297, 1979)

Described Romo de Vivar transformation, a reaction of transformation involving a 2-acetoxy-brominated compound into a 2-hydroxy-acetylated compound

With J. Romo. Some experiments with 16 β-bromo-17 α-acetoxy-20 ketosteroids. Synthesis of 16 α-17α-dihydroxysteroids and related compounds. J. Org. Chem. 21:902-9, 1956