Alexander Schoenberg

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Alexander Schönberg (born October 28, 1892 in Berlin , † January 10, 1985 in Berlin) was a German chemist and university professor. His specialty was organic chemistry .

Alexander Schönberg (1977)

Life

Alexander Schönberg was born in Berlin in 1892 as the only child of a Prussian judge. His mother came from a long-established Jewish bourgeois family from Berlin. After graduating from high school, Schönberg began studying chemistry at the University of Bonn . Here he joined the Corps Rhenania . After the outbreak of the First World War, Schönberg joined the Guard Corps as a volunteer. He used hospital stays in Freiburg and Aachen due to injuries to continue his studies. Towards the end of the war he was unfit for front duty on the staff of the Guard Corps in Berlin, where he finished his studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin (today's Humboldt University ).

Schönberg completed his doctoral thesis Contributions to the Knowledge of Chromones in the working group of Hugo Simonis in 1919 at the Technical University of Charlottenburg (today Technical University of Berlin ). In 1920 he became an assistant there and completed his habilitation in 1922 with Robert Pschorr . In 1923 he married his childhood friend Elisabeth Seyffardt from Bonn. A daughter was born to the couple in 1924, and in 1926 Schönberg was appointed professor by the Technical University. Schoenberg quickly became known through his scientific publications, so that in 1932 he was elected to the board of the German Chemical Society. A university career seemed mapped out, but the takeover of power by the National Socialists (1933) destroyed academic hopes in Germany. The hunt for dissenters and “non-Aryans” was eagerly pursued at universities. Schoenberg was increasingly exposed to threats and attacks from various quarters. In this situation, the invitation from the Scottish University of Edinburgh to accept a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Medicine came in very handy.

Schönberg went to Scotland with his wife and daughter and stayed there until 1937. Schönberg's application for a position advertised at the University of Cairo was successful, and Richard Willstätter , Nobel Prize winner in chemistry , recommended him. Schönberg worked there until 1957 as a professor of organic chemistry and later also as director of the chemical institute until he was dismissed because he had reached the age limit.

After his emigration, Schönberg was classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist police. In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they would be removed from the occupation troops in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Subsequent SS special commands were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

In 1958 Schönberg moved to Berlin and became full professor ( em. ) At his old university, today's Technical University of Berlin , through a legally enforced reparation procedure . There Schönberg built up a new working group at the age of 66. Until 1982 Schönberg was able to devote himself to organic chemistry. Six dissertations and around 110 publications fall into this late phase alone. The best-known academic students of Alexander Schönberg are Ahmed Mustafa (Minister in the cabinet of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt ) and Klaus Praefcke (1933–2013), later professor of organic chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin.

Scientific importance

Schönberg became known for his preparative work on organic sulfur compounds. His work on the photochemistry of organic compounds, especially in sunlight, which he carried out in Egypt, received international attention . Other work dealt with synthetic estrogens , reactions with diazomethane , the Strecker degradation of α- amino acids and the reactivity of carbon-carbon double bonds. His life's work comprises over 300 publications (complete list: see Erich Singer's obituary) and two books. In addition, he is the author of summarizing articles that appeared in Houben-Weyl's “Methods of Organic Chemistry”.

Works (selection)

  • Alexander Schönberg: Preparative Organic Photochemistry . with a contribution by Günther Otto Schenck , Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Göttingen-Heidelberg, 1958.
  • Alexander Schönberg: Preparative Organic Photochemistry. 2nd completely revised edition of Preparative Organic Photochemistry. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1968. (in collaboration with GO Schenk, O.-A. Neumüller)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Erich Singer: Alexander Schönberg 1982–1985. In: Chemical Reports . 120, 1987, pp. I-XIX.
  2. Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 15 , 723.
  3. ^ Entry on Schönberg in the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
  4. Alexander Schönberg, Ahmed Mustafa, Mohamed Ezz El-Din Sobhy: Thermochromisms of dixanthylenes. In: Journal of the American Chemical Society . 75, 1953, pp. 3377-3378.
  5. Acknowledgment for Alexander Schönberg's 75th birthday. In: News from chemistry and technology. 15, 1967, p. 397.
  6. (a) Alexander Schönberg: Preparative Organic Photochemistry. With a contribution from GO Schenk. Springer, Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg 1958; (b) Alexander Schönberg: Preparative Organic Photochemistry. In collaboration with GO Schenk, O.-A. Neumüller. 2nd edition of Preparative Organic Photochemistry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1968.
  7. Houben-Weyl : Methods of Organic Chemistry. Edited by Eugen Müller with the special assistance of Otto Bayer , Hans Meerwein and Karl Ziegler . Volume IX: Sulfur, Selenium, Tellurium Compounds. Thieme, Stuttgart 1955, pp. 149-169 (ethylene sulfide) and from p. 695 (thioaldehydes and thioketones).