Edward Schunck

Edward Schunck (born August 16, 1820 in Manchester , † January 13, 1903 in Kersal near Manchester) was a British chemist and entrepreneur.

Schunck Building, University of Manchester

Schunck was the son of a German businessman and studied chemistry in Manchester with William Henry , Berlin (with Heinrich Rose and Heinrich Gustav Magnus ) and in Giessen with Justus Liebig , where he received his doctorate. In 1842 he was back in England, where he had a calico printing plant and researched dyes such as madder and indigo in his private laboratory . His results later did not last. For example, he said, a second ingredient of the madder root in addition Alizarin have found, which he called rubian and he meant a common ingredient of the indigo plant, the Färberknöterich and Färberwaids to have found (and in urine as urinary indican), which he indican called which later turned out to be not identical. In 1884 he also dealt (with his colleague Leon Pawel Teodor Marchlewski ) with chlorophyll . Schunck initially suspected the identity with the dye in hemoglobin ( hematoporphyrin ), which Marchlewski refuted and both showed that they were only of a similar structure ( porphyrins ). Such a similarity of compounds from the plant and animal kingdoms indicated a common origin and was perceived as a great discovery at the time. Marchlewski returned to Poland in 1900.

Schunck left over £ 20,000 to the University of Manchester for chemical research, as well as his library and private laboratory, which was dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt at the university. In 1899 he received the Davy Medal .

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989