Bernhard Prager

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Bernhard Prager (born May 12, 1867 in Berlin ; † August 30, 1934 ) was a German chemist who was editor of Beilstein's Handbook of Organic Chemistry from 1907 to 1933 , initially with Paul Jacobson , and later alone.

Life

Prager studied in Berlin, where he studied chemistry with August Wilhelm von Hofmann and received his doctorate on pseudoureas in 1890 . He then worked for eight years at the aniline paint factory Nötzel, Itzel & Comp. worked in Griesheim, but was dissatisfied with the work as an industrial chemist. In 1899 he accepted an offer from Paul Jacobson to work on the new edition of Beilstein . Friedrich Konrad Beilstein had recently increased the size of this encyclopedia of organic compounds in the third edition to 70,000, but was then overwhelmed with the further processing alone. The German Chemical Society (DChG) organized the further processing under Jacobson's direction. Since Jacobson had little time because of other obligations, the main work of the publication soon fell to Prager. Both prepared the Beilstein system for the 4th edition, which appeared in 1918.

Prager was initially able to undertake and publish his own chemical experimental work in the Hofmannhaus (during the publication of the supplementary volumes of the third edition until 1906), but to his regret no more. Even then, teams of chemists were working on the publication (separated by literature period, one for 1910 to 1920, the other for 1920 to 1930) and by 1936 the 4th edition comprised 20,000 pages with 200,000 compounds, without being even remotely complete . Paul Schmidt and Dora Stern were also named as co-editors on the volumes.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Beilstein's publisher Julius Springer followed pressure from the National Socialists and forced him to resign from the Beilstein editorial team. Other Jewish members were also dismissed (Fritz Radt, Dora Stern, Edith Josephy). Prager died soon afterwards of heart disease in 1934. Friedrich Richter (* 1896) succeeded him as editor .

Radt, Josephy and Dora Stern went to the Netherlands and accepted an offer from the large Dutch science publisher Elsevier to advance an English-language competing project for Beilstein (Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Organic Chemistry). During the German occupation, Josephy was killed in the Holocaust, Radt survived the war. Until 1942 Dora Stern still worked with Radt on the Elsevier edition. After the war, the continuation was abandoned, especially since the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) agreed on the continuation of the Beilstein as a central reference (in the USA, thanks to the expropriation of German copyrights, reprints were very popular). Dora Stern - who was in the Beilstein editorial team from 1907 to 1937 - later went to the USA.

literature

  • Obituary by Dora Stern: Bernhard Prager - Editor of Beilstein 1907-1933 , J. Chem. Education, Volume 47, 1947, pp. 592-594.
  • Obituary by Friedrich Richter, Reports of the German Chemical Society 67 , A166 - A167 (1934). doi : 10.1002 / cber.19340671144

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He was Secretary General of the DChG and was also busy editing his textbook on organic chemistry (with Victor Meyer ).
  2. ↑ Represented in the first volume of the 4th edition and in B. Prager, D. Stern, K. Ilberg System der Organischenverbindungen. A guide to using Beilstein's Handbook of Organic Chemistry. Springer 1929.
  3. ↑ Cornelis Andriesse Dutch Messengers. A history of science publishing 1930–1980 , Brill 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Prager, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1934