Arthur Michael

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Michael (born August 7, 1853 in Buffalo , New York , † February 8, 1942 in Orlando , Florida ) was an American chemist , who is known for the Michael addition .

Life

Arthur Michael was born in Buffalo, New York State. Due to an illness he was unable to attend Harvard University and he learned chemistry through local teachers and in his private laboratory. At the age of 18 he traveled to Europe with his parents and on this trip he met several famous chemists, with whom he also studied; u. a. August Wilhelm von Hofmann , Robert Wilhelm Bunsen , Charles Adolphe Wurtz and Dmitri Iwanowitsch Mendelejew . In 1880 he returned to the United States and worked at Tufts College as a professor of chemistry. There he met Helen Cecilia De Silver Abbott and married her. After he failed to manage the chemistry faculty at Clark University in Worcester (Massachusetts) in 1891, they went to England together and worked in a private laboratory on the Isle of Wight . After a few years they returned to Tufts College, where Michael retired in 1907. He then founded a new private laboratory in Newton Center near Boston. In 1912 he went to Harvard University, where he worked as a professor without lecture obligations until 1936. It is noteworthy that Michael never received a university degree.

Michael was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1883 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1889 .

plant

Michael is mainly known today for the Michael addition named after him , but he also introduced thermodynamic concepts, especially that of entropy, into organic chemistry.

Web links

literature

  • Louis Fieser; Arthur Michael . In: Biographical Memoirs . Volume 46, 1975, pp. 331-366.
  • Arthur Michael: About the addition of sodium acetoacetic and sodium malonic acid ethers to the ethers of unsaturated acids , Journal for practical chemistry 35 (1887) 349-356 (Michael addition)
  • Albert B. Costa: Arthur Michael (1853-1942) , Journal of Chemical Education 48 (1971) 243-246.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Arthur Michael at academictree.org, accessed on January 3, 2019.
  2. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1850–1899 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 24, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Michael, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo , New York, USA
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1942
Place of death Orlando (Florida) , USA