It was not the first time Schreiber had been featured in the mainstream media, however.

In 1984, the well-respected chemistry professor had the privilege of sharing Esquire Magazine's Most Dubious Achievement award with John DeLorean.

His "achievement" was summarized by radio talk show host Don Imus on the air as a "crackpot professor from Yale creating a cockroach dating agency," Schreiber says.

The professor even got a call from the president of Yale about his new found notoriety.

His experiment was in fact a good deal more complex than creating a "cockroach dating agency," of course.

Schreiber was synthesizing--or essentially making from scratch-a complex molecule known as Periplanone-B. This molecule, which was a cockroach pheromone represented a certain structural class of molecules in chemistry known a terpenes.

One reason for creating the molecule artificially was for possible commercial use in roach exterminators, but for the researcher this was the experiment's least important purpose.

"To my dismay it was the....reason that got the most coverage by the media," Schreiber says "Most of the newspaper articles and wire services focused on using this molecule as a cockroach sex attractant."

In fact, Schreiber was seeking to understand the reason for the physical response the molecule caused in the insect, and also use it to showcase the abilities of his field of study at the time, synthetic organic chemistry.

Schreiber did not start out interested in organic chemistry, or any chemistry at all.

A native of Fairfax, Va., he attended the University of Virginia, where he originally intended to major in biology.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I started college," Schreiber says.

But when he took organic chemistry as a requirement for the biology concentration he found it appealed to him for its looks.

"It seemed like an aesthetically attractive field to me," he says. "Many of those structures have these amazing shapes which caught my attention."

It was also the concreteness of the field that drew him in, Schreiber says.