Andreas Sigismund Marggraf

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Andreas Sigismund Marggraf

Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (born March 3, 1709 in Berlin ; † August 7, 1782 there ) was a German chemist . He is considered the last important chemist of the era of the phlogiston theory and discovered the sugar content of native plants.

Life

Andreas Sigismund was the first son of Henning Christian Marggraf (1680–1754) and Anna Martha Kellner (1685–1752). His father, founder and owner of the bear pharmacy, taught the young people pharmacy and chemistry . Later, as a chemistry student, he was a student of Caspar Neumann , the head of the practical (pharmaceutical) chemistry class at the Ober-Collegium medicum in Berlin. Neumann, a student of Georg Ernst Stahl , introduced Marggraf to the phlogiston theory , which was to determine his chemical thinking for a lifetime. To expand his knowledge, Marggraf studied chemistry and physics in Strasbourg , medicine in Halle and metallurgy in Freiberg . In order to deepen his knowledge, he visited some smelting and mining locations.

Back in Berlin, Marggraf worked from 1732 to 1752 in his father's pharmacy, the Golden Bear . Henning Christian Marggraf was probably the only pharmacist in Berlin who traded cane sugar . The luxury goods were only known to the upper class and were only sold in pharmacies. While he was working in the bear pharmacy, his son was already busy developing sugar from local plants and discovered sugar in beetroot in 1747 . In 1738 he became a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences .

After the death of his mother in 1752, Andreas Sigismund Marggraf lost the bear pharmacy through an intrigue of his brothers-in-law Joachim Friedrich Lehmann and Julius Tilebein and had to leave the house quickly. From 1754 he was able to concentrate entirely on his chemical research, as the academy provided him with a laboratory and an official apartment (Dorotheenstrasse 10). In 1754 he presented pure clay for the first time . Due to his discovery of sugar in beetroot, after the death of the previous director Johann Theodor Eller in 1760, he became director of the physical-mathematical class of the Royal Academy of Sciences. He held this position until his death in 1782. As his successor, Franz Carl Achard also took over the laboratory and the official residence.

Marggraf stayed away from the current issues of chemistry and devoted himself mostly to his analytical investigations in the laboratory. This behavior, coupled with his research successes, earned him a lot of recognition. In 1776 he became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . In 1777 he became a member ( associé étranger ) of the Académie des sciences in Paris. Martin Heinrich Klaproth , who was married to Christina Sophia Lehmann, the daughter of the businessman Joachim Friedrich Lehmann, who had bought the bear pharmacy from his brother-in-law Henning Christian Marggraf in 1753, was one of his students . Klaproth acquired this pharmacy in 1780 after marrying Christina Sophia Lehmann.

Andreas Sigismund Marggraf died in Berlin in 1782 at the age of 73. He was buried in the churchyard at the Dorotheenstädtische Church . The tomb was lost when the church and churchyard were leveled in 1965 at the latest.

Services

The postage stamp from 1992 on the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Sugar Institute in Berlin shows silhouettes by Marggraf, Achard and Scheibler .
  • Improved method for obtaining phosphorus by "distillation" from evaporated urine with lead oxychloride (horn lead), sand and coal (1743). Marggraf recognized that phosphorus increases in weight when it is burned (see Antoine Lavoisier ). He examined the phosphoric acid and salts of phosphoric acid (sodium ammonium phosphate = Sal microcosmicum ) thoroughly.
  • Production of potassium cyanide from bovine blood and use of the formation of Berlin blue to detect iron, description of the dissolving effect of potassium cyanide on metal salts and noble metals (silver, gold) (1745)
  • Zinc extraction by reduction of calamine with carbon powder under exclusion of air (1746) and by heating zinc sulfate, which he obtains from calamine and alum
  • Investigations of the sugar content of native plants. By discovering a high sugar content in beetroot , he laid the foundation for a domestic sugar industry ( beet sugar industry ). In 1747 he presented his observations to the Academy:
    "So I occasionally had the idea of ​​researching the parts of various plants that have a sweet taste, and after various experiments which I have made, I found that some of these plants, not only contain a substance similar to sugar, but in fact contain real sugar, which is exactly the same as what is known from sugar cane . "

He mentions three particularly easy-growing plants that thrive on mediocre soil, from whose roots he isolated pure sugar: 1) the "white chard" Cicla officinarum ( beetroot ), 2) the sugar root (Sisarum Dodonaci), 3) the beet chard or the red chard. He describes in detail the extraction of sugar from the sap of these roots and the purification of it, but he stops there. He leaves the exploitation of these attempts to a local sugar industry to his friend, student and successor Franz Karl Achard , although he himself fully recognizes the scope of his discovery, as can be seen from his own words: "From the experiments presented here it is clear that this sweet salt can be prepared in the same way in our homeland as it is in the regions where sugar cane grows. "
from: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

  • Introduction of the microscope as an examination device in chemistry. Marggraf used it to observe sugar crystals. (from 1747)
  • He examined the water of a ferrous spring in Berlin in 1748. As he confirmed the healing powers of the water, the name "Gesundbrunnen" (district in the Berlin-Mitte district) was given to the current district.
  • Obtaining formic acid by distilling ants (1749)
  • Differentiation between formic and acetic acid by reducing the mercury oxide with formic acid
  • Differentiation of sodium and potassium by flame coloring (1758)
  • Marggraf examined the metal platinum with aqua regia and received a platinum chloride solution, this solution was used to separate the sodium from the potassium salts.
  • First characterizations of the inorganic color pigment ultramarine (1768).

Works

  • Most of Marggraf's treatises are in the Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences de Berlin from 1747–1779 and in the Miscellanea Berolinensia .
  • Chemical writings. Berlin 1761 and 1767.

literature

  • Albert Ladenburg :  Marggraf, Andreas Sigismund . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 334-336.
  • Marggraf (1709-1782). In: The Book of Great Chemists. Edited by Günther Bugge with the participation of renowned scholars. Volume 1, Verlag Chemie, Weinheim / Bergstr. 1929, pp. 228-239 and 483 (with picture and list of scriptures). - Unchanged reprint, ibid. 1955.
  • Karl Leutner: Andreas Sigismund Marggraf. In: Germans we are proud of. First episode. Verlag der Nation Berlin 1955, pp. 63–65 (with picture in front of p. 63).
  • Michael Engel:  Marggraf, Andreas Sigismund. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 165-167 ( digitized version ).
  • Alexander Kraft: Chemist in Berlin: Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (1709–1782). In: The Bear of Berlin. Yearbook of the Association for the History of Berlin, Volume 58, 2009, pp. 9–30, digital: [4]

Web links

Commons : Andreas Sigismund Marggraf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Andreas Sigismund Marggraf  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Hentschel: Sweet salt for everyone. In: Märkische Oderzeitung. Journal from 21./22. March 2009, p. 2.
  2. ↑ Rolf Schlegel Vincent van Gogh a geneticist ?: Curiosities from botany, breeding and inheritance II , 2013 (without pagination) [1]
  3. ↑ Klaus Roth, Chemische Leckerbissen , Weinheim 2014, p. 93, digital preview: [2]
  4. ↑ Alexander Kraft, Chemie in Berlin , 2012, excerpt in [3]
  5. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Andreas Sigismund Marggraf. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 4, 2015 .
  6. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter M. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 19, 2020 (French).
  7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , pp. 40–41.
personal data
SURNAME Marggraf, Andreas Sigismund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1709
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1782
Place of death Berlin