Eduard Farber

Eduard Farber , also Eduard Färber or Eduard Faerber , (born April 17, 1892 in Brody , Galicia , † July 15, 1969 ) was an Austrian-American industrial chemist and chemical historian.

Life

Farber (then Färber) grew up in Leipzig as the son of a businessman and studied natural sciences (chemistry, physics, mineralogy) in Leipzig with his doctorate in 1916. He then worked as an assistant to Carl Neuberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Experimental Therapy in Berlin. Due to an eye problem, he was not drafted during World War I, but converted a spirits factory in Budapest into glycerine production for the ammunition industry in 1917/18. After the war he became chief chemist at Deutsche Bergin AG for wood hydrolysis. In National Socialist Germany, as he foresaw the war, he tried to leave the country and went to the USA in 1938, where he again worked in the chemical industry and as a consultant. In 1943 he became director of chemical research at Timber Engineering Corp. in Washington, DC in 1957 he retired, but remained active as a consultant.

He held 85 US patents and published as an industrial chemist. But he is known for his work on the history of chemistry. Already in Berlin he became interested in the history of chemistry, stimulated by the book on the history of chemistry by Ernst von Meyer . In this and in other books, however, he missed the social and economic environment and wrote (sponsored by Neuberg) a book on the history of chemistry, which was published by Springer in 1921. In 1929/30 he contributed to Günther Bugge's anthology, Das Buch der Große Chemiker . 1955/56 he was chairman of the historical section of the American Chemical Society.

In 1962 he became an adjunct professor at the American University in Washington and he was an advisor to the Smithsonian Institution .

In 1964 he received the Dexter Award .

Fonts

• The historical development of chemistry , Berlin: Springer 1921, archive
• with Moritz Färber (editor): Robert Boyle 's skeptical chemist , Ostwald's classic of the exact sciences; No. 229, 1928
• Evolution of Chemistry: A History of Its Ideas, Methods, and Materials, New York: Ronald Press, 1952, 2nd edition 1969
• Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry, 1953, 1962
• Milestones of Modern Chemistry: Original Reports of the Discoveries, 1966
• Published in: Great Chemists, Interscience 1961

Web links

• Biography at ACS (PDF; 283 kB English)