Albin Haller

Albin Haller (born March 7, 1849 in Felleringen , Alsace , † April 29, 1925 in Paris ) was a French chemist.

Albin Haller 1902

Haller was the son of a woodcarver and a seamstress, the family had eleven children. He attended the École primaire supérieure in Wesserling and was from 1866 a pharmacist's assistant in Wesserling. Thanks to his intelligence, the pharmacist sent him to Munster to see Achille Gault, who had been a student of Eugène Théodore Jacquemin in Strasbourg and who in turn was a student of Charles Frédéric Gerhardt , and from there he went to Colmar , to the pharmacy of Gault's brother, who was also his Gave classes in French and Latin, so that he received his bachelor's degree in Strasbourg in 1870. During the Franco-Prussian War he left Alsace and worked at a military hospital in Lyon. At the end of the war in 1871 he went to Nancy, where Achille Gault, who had also left Alsace to live in France, opened a new pharmacy. He studied in Nancy at the newly founded École supérieure de Pharmacie der Faculté des Sciences (moved here from Strasbourg after the war), passed the pharmacist's examination in 1873 and was there assistant, received his licentiate in 1875, taught a course in analytical chemistry and from 1877 received his doctorate in Paris in 1879 (Docteur ès Sciences) with a thesis on camphor and its derivatives. He was then Maître de conférences and from 1885 professor in Nancy. In 1889 he founded a chemistry institute there for the training of engineers. From 1899 he was Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Sorbonne as the successor to Charles Friedel . From 1905 until his death he was director of the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles.

From 1890 he dealt with camphor and its derivatives and contributed to its structure elucidation with various syntheses. In 1905 he synthesized menthol .

He developed various syntheses using sodium amide , especially branched ketones . The Haller-Bauer reaction is named after him and the alkylative degradation according to Haller (1909), both using sodium amide, which he also used for the synthesis of pyrrolidine and tetrahydropyridine derivatives. He also dealt with the mechanisms of ester formation between esters and between esters and an alcohol and found an improved separation of terpene alcohols and essential oils, which was of great importance for the perfume industry. Haller also dealt with the application of physical chemistry in organic chemistry. He contributed significantly to the development of the training of chemical engineers in France, whereby his friendship with the industrialist Ernest Solvay played a role.

In 1917 he received the Davy Medal . In 1900 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences , of which he was president in 1923 and whose Prix Jecker he received in 1898. He was also a member of the Académie de Médecine and the Académie d'Agriculture (President 1918) and, since 1912, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . He was president of the Société chimique de France in 1904 and 1910 . In 1917 he was founding president of the Société de chimie industrial . From 1907 to 1919 he was a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . He was an officer of the Legion of Honor and multiple honorary doctorates.

His wife Marie Lucie Comon was a cousin of Henri Poincaré , with whom he had four children (one son fell as a pilot in 1916). His sister Aline was married to Émile Boutroux .

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989
• Entry in Laurence Lestel (Ed.) Itinéraires de chimistes: 1857-2007, 150 ans de chimie en France avec les présidents de la SFC , EDP 2008, p. 245

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 102.