Alfred Stock

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Portrait of the German chemist Alfred Stock (1876–1946).

Alfred Stock (born July 16, 1876 in Danzig ; † August 12, 1946 in Aken (Elbe) ) was a German inorganic chemist . He has done pioneering work with regard to boranes and silanes , high vacuum technology and the toxicity of mercury . The Society of German Chemists awards the Alfred Stock Memorial Prize named after him .

Life

When Stock was two years old, the family moved from Danzig to Berlin . After graduating from the Friedrich-Werder school to Berlin in 1894 Stock began in the same year at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin a study chemistry . On February 22, 1897 he became an extraordinary member of the German Chemical Society . In 1898 he finished his doctoral thesis on a quantitative separation of arsenic from antimony, monobromacrolein and tribromopropionaldehyde, on some bromonitrosocarbons and their conversion into pseudonitroles . His doctoral supervisor was Emil Fischer , who awarded him his doctorate in 1899.

This was followed by a further one-year training with the French inorganic chemist and toxicologist Henri Moissan in Paris . Stock was given the task of synthesizing as yet unknown compounds from silicon and boron. Five years later, Stock completed his habilitation at Berlin University. His inaugural lecture on March 12, 1904 dealt with "The Hydrogen Compounds of Metals".

On August 21, 1906, Alfred Stock married the daughter of a factory owner, Clara Emilie Ida Venzky. The marriage resulted in two children, Hildegard Ida and Ursula Adelheid Elly.

In 1909 he went to the TH Breslau as a full professor . There he concentrated on studies of boron and silicon and their hydrogen compounds , the boranes and silanes. In addition to the hydrogen boride and hydrogen silicon compounds, Stock dealt with the pure preparation of metallic beryllium , the preparation of carbon subsulfide, carbon suboxide , selenium and tellurium carbon disulfide as well as the sulfur, halogen and nitrogen compounds of boron.

In April 1916 he went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry as a scientific member and successor to Richard Willstätter , where he continued his studies in Breslau. During the First World War , Stock was also obliged to deal with war-related chemical research. At the neighboring Habersche Institute in Berlin he was involved in the development of irritants and smoke generators. In 1921 he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry as the successor to emeritus Ernst Otto Beckmann , where other German researchers such as Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were also working at the time .

During this time, the health problems that he had suffered from for many years grew worse. It was not until 1924 that the toxicologist Louis Lewin discovered chronic mercury poisoning as the cause of Stock's suffering. The illness caused in the chemical laboratory prompted the analyst Stock to deal extensively with the "treacherous" poison mercury and the mercury vapors.

His first publication on this topic on April 15, 1926 in the Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie , in which he also proves a constant release of mercury from amalgam fillings, triggered a debate about this dental filling material for years. In the introduction to another article on June 16, 1928, he defended his subject:

"Anyone who has experienced the treacherous, depressing effects of the amalgam on themselves feels it not only as their right, but also as a sacred human duty to help everyone who is concerned to enlighten and restore."

- Alfred Stock

Since then, Stock has urged people to refrain from amalgam fillings . The debate reached an enormous public and later went down in medical history as the Second Amalgam War .

The prospect of mercury-free workspaces prompted him to join the Technical University of Karlsruhe as a professor in 1926 . Stock continued his mercury studies there and was rector of the university in 1929/30.

In 1932, Stock was visiting professor at Cornell University in Ithaca (NY) for four months . During this time he gave experimental lectures in New York City , Chicago , Baltimore and other cities, mainly on boron and beryllium.

Stock was a member of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) since May 1, 1933 and expressed himself anti-Semitic in correspondence with his American chemist colleague Louis Monroe Dennis about the expulsion of Jewish scientists from universities in Germany.

At the age of 60, Stock retired due to illness on October 1, 1936 and took up a research professorship at the University of Berlin.

From February 6, 1936 to May 7, 1938 Stock was President of the German Chemical Society .

During the Second World War , the Stock couple's house in Berlin was damaged by bombs. Because of this, Stock and his wife first moved to the supposedly safe Bad Warmbrunn in Silesia in September 1943 , but in February 1945 they had to join the flow of refugees to the west and found accommodation in Aken near Dessau.

After the war (1946) Stock, despite his age, felt obliged to contribute to the revival of German chemistry through memoranda and lectures (for example in Bitterfeld).

Inventions (selection)

  • Expansion thermometer
  • Stock's high vacuum apparatus: a glass apparatus that enables safe work even with highly flammable and highly toxic substances in a high vacuum.
  • Basics of the chemistry of chelate complexes of metals ; see also ligand
  • Stock nomenclature ( the Stock system, Stock nomenclature ): internationally used system to name the oxidation states of chemicals with numbers.

Publications (selection)

  • Practical course in quantitative inorganic analysis . Berlin 1909 (6th edition, Munich 1970).
  • Ultrastructural chemistry . Berlin 1920.
  • Hydrides of boron and silicon . Ithaca / USA 1933 (new edition Ithaca / USA 1957).
  • The dangers of mercury and amalgam tooth fillings . Verlag Chemie, Berlin 1928.
  • Alfred Stock: The atom . In: Angewandte Chemie Volume 37, No. 6, 1924, doi: 10.1002 / ange.19240370602 , pp. 65-67.

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . P. XIX – XX.
  2. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XX.
  3. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XXI.
  4. ↑ A. Piloty, A. Stock: About a quantitative separation of arsenic from antimony. Volume 30, 1649, 1897
  5. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XXI.
  6. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XXIV.
  7. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XXX.
  8. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . P. XXX - XXI.
  9. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XXXI - XXXIV.
  10. ↑ A. Stock, P. Praetorius: The representation of the beryllium. Volume 58, 1571 1925.
  11. ↑ A. Stock, P. Praetorius: On the knowledge of the coal subsulfides. Volume 45, 3568, 1912.
  12. ↑ A. Stock, H. Stoltzenberg: About the representation of the carbon suboxide from malonic acid and phosphorus pentoxide. Volume 50, 498, 1917.
  13. ^ A. Stock, P. Praetorius: Tellurium carbon disulfide, CSTe. Volume 47, 131, 1914.
  14. ↑ A. Stock, E. Willfroth: Selenium-sulfur carbon, CSSe. Volume 47, 144, 1914.
  15. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LXVIII.
  16. ↑ Chronology of the KWI for Chemistry in Berlin (PDF)
  17. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, pp. XXXVI f. (1950) doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 .
  18. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XLVI.
  19. ↑ Prof. Prof. Dr. Alfred Stock in the journal for applied chemistry. June 16, 1928, p. 633.
  20. ^ A. Stock: The dangerousness of mercury vapor and amalgams. In: Medicine. Clinic. Volume 22, 1209, 1926.
  21. ↑ A. Stock: The danger of mercury and amalgam dental fillings. In: Journal of Applied Chemistry. Volume 41, 663, 1926.
  22. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XLVIII.
  23. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LVIII.
  24. ^ Alfred Neubauer: Alfred Stock and the Jewish question. In: News from chemistry. Volume 53, No. 6, 2005, ISSN  1868-0054 , pp. 633-637.
  25. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LXII.
  26. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LXII.
  27. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LXIII.
  28. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. XLI.
  29. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . Pp. XXXIX-XL.
  30. ^ Alfred Stock: On the nomenclature and registration of inorganic substances . In: Chem.-Ztg. Volume 33, 205, 1909.
  31. ^ Alfred Stock's entry as a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on June 22, 2016.
  32. ↑ Prof. Dr. Alfred Stock. Member entry at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , accessed on June 23, 2016 .
  33. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LXI.
  34. ^ Egon Wiberg: Alfred Stock 1876-1946 . In: Chemical Reports , Volume 83, No. 6, 1950, doi: 10.1002 / cber.19500830619 . S. LXII.
  35. ↑ GDCh prices . GDCh - Society of German Chemists, Alfred Stock Memorial Prize; accessed on February 2, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Stock, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1946
Place of death Aken (Elbe)