Emil Erlenmeyer

obituary

Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer (born June 28, 1825 in Wehen near Wiesbaden , † January 22, 1909 in Aschaffenburg ) was a German chemist . He was responsible for the Erlenmeyer rule and the Erlenmeyer flask .

life and work

Emil Erlenmeyer first studied medicine in Gießen and from 1845 attended Justus von Liebig's chemistry lectures , later with Leopold Gmelin in Heidelberg . During his studies in 1845 he became a member of the Cattia Gießen fraternity . After his pharmaceutical state examination in Nassau (Lahn) , he ran a pharmacy in Katzenelnbogen for 5 years . In 1850 he returned to Gießen and received his doctorate in the same year under Justus Liebig with a thesis on basic cyan lead .

He then bought a pharmacy in Wiesbaden and also taught chemistry at the Wiesbaden commercial and trade school. Since the financial success failed to materialize, he completed his habilitation in 1855 with Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg on a subject in the field of mineral fertilizer chemistry . He became a private lecturer here in 1857 and also ran a private consulting laboratory for the fertilizer industry. In 1863 he became an associate professor in Heidelberg, but then accepted the professorship for chemistry at the Munich Polytechnic , where he was also a consultant to various chemical companies, including the Heufeld chemical factory in Upper Bavaria, the predecessor of today's Süd-Chemie AG .

In 1877 the Polytechnic School in Kgl. Bavarian Technical University of Munich was renamed and from 1877 to 1880 Erlenmeyer was its director in addition to his teaching activities. After a very successful work as a chemist and university lecturer, Erlenmeyer retired in 1883 for health reasons. He then moved to Frankfurt am Main as a private scholar and in 1893 to Aschaffenburg to live with his daughter. From 1893 to 1897 he received private research opportunities from his son-in-law Hermann Dingler at the Aschaffenburg Forestry College .

Erlenmeyer contributed a lot to the spread of atomic theory. At a young age, he studied the structure of chemical compounds for a long time and debated them with his colleagues. Since he had worked as a part-time editor of the journal for chemistry, pharmacy and mathematics since 1859 , he was able to put his theories up for discussion here at an early stage. In 1862, on the basis of his investigations, he was the first to determine that there are not only single bonds, but also multiple bonds . In doing so, he made a significant contribution to recognizing and understanding the structure of many connections. In addition, he always used Couper's notation for structural formulas, which is common today, in his publications and thus helped it to break through.

In Munich he continued to research the structure of organic compounds intensively and found the right structure for naphthalene , guanidine and tyrosine . For the latter two he also gave synthetic methods , and in addition he formulated the Erlenmeyer rule .

Furthermore, the Erlenmeyer flask is named after him , a conical glass flask that is used in all laboratories today.

His son Emil Erlenmeyer jun. also became a chemist, he developed the Erlenmeyer synthesis , his grandson is the chemist Hans Erlenmeyer . Emil Erlenmeyer's daughter Maria married the botanist Hermann Dingler , her son was the philosopher Hugo Dingler .

In 1855 he was admitted to the Socrates Masonic Lodge for Fortitude . In Heidelberg he joined the Ruprecht Lodge for the five roses .

Honors

In 1855 he was made an honorary member of the Nassau Association for Natural History .
In 1873 Erlenmeyer became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , in 1874 Vice President and in 1884 President of the German Chemical Society .

Fonts

E. Erlenmeyer: Textbook of organic chemistry. CF Winters Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig a. Heidelberg, 1867 a. 1868.
- New edition as Erlenmeyer´s textbook of organic chemistry , 3 volumes, Leipzig: Winter, until 1894, editors Richard Meyer , Otto Hecht , Heinrich Goldschmidt , Karl von Buchka (1856–1917).

literature

Berthold Peter Anft: Erlenmeyer, Richard August Carl Emil. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 594 f. ( Digitized version ).
O. Krätz : The portrait: Emil Erlenmeyer 1825–1909 , in: Chemistry in our time 1972 , 6, 53–58; ( doi : 10.1002 / ciuz.19720060204 ).

Individual evidence

^ Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießen fraternity 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, O. Cattia. No. 5.
^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Emil RAC Erlenmeyer at academictree.org, accessed on February 4, 2018.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Erlenmeyer, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Erlenmeyer, Richard August Carl Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 28, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH	Labor , Duchy of Nassau
DATE OF DEATH	January 22, 1909
Place of death	Aschaffenburg , Kingdom of Bavaria , German Empire

[1] Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießen fraternity 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, O. Cattia. No. 5.

[2] Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Emil RAC Erlenmeyer at academictree.org, accessed on February 4, 2018.