Eugene G. Rochow

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Eugene George Rochow (born October 4, 1909 in Newark , New Jersey , † March 21, 2002 in Fort Myers , Florida ) was an American chemist ( inorganic chemistry , electronegativity ). He is known for developing a new class of industrial polymers called silicones .

Eugene G.Rochow at the ACS Meeting Detroit 1965

Life

Rochow grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey and attended Columbia High School. In his youth he was a radio hobbyist and also wanted to study electrical engineering, but his brother (who was already studying chemistry) and his father, a chemist in a leather tannery, convinced him to study chemistry. He studied at Cornell University , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1931 and his doctorate in 1935. In between he worked at Halowax Corporation in 1931/32. In Cornell, under Louis Monroe Dennis , whose assistant he was, he synthesized new germanium compounds at the Baker Lab and heard guest lectures from Alfred Stock , who had a strong influence on him and to whom he had been assigned as a lecture assistant at the time. From 1935 on he worked for General Electric in their company Hotpoint. Although he felt uncomfortable in the industry, he succeeded in developing the best known insulator of the time with methyl silicone, even though the company did not support him and he had to do the development in secret (officially he was working on ceramics - periclase ). With a stubbornness that he attributed to Stock's influence, he succeeded in enforcing a patent with the Corning Glass Works , despite opposition from the company and a dispute in court , and he also developed a synthesis method first with magnesium and then an inexpensive method without magnesium , also with little support from the company. This led to the later direct process (Rochow process, direct process) mentioned method, which he also Charles E. Reed a fluidized bed reactor (fluid bed catalysis) used and in addition to copper zinc as a promoter. He continued to go his own way in industrial research, this time in organometallic chemistry, but when his company asked him to research the development of nuclear reactors in ships, he dealt with nuclear chemistry for some time (transferred to Richmond (Washington) ), but left in 1948 the Company. Rochow was a Quaker and thus a pacifist. He went to Harvard University , where he soon received "tenure" due to his teaching skills. His extraordinary introductory chemistry lectures (Chemistry 1) were described by a student magazine as black magic 1 and the best show since Merlin. In 1948 he became an associate professor, in 1951 a professor and in 1970 he retired from Harvard, where he was then professor emeritus until 1996.

Rochow also wrote a novel about the wives of three well-known chemists ( The Holland Sisters: Their Influence on the Success of Their Husbands Perkin, Kipping and Lapworth ) and their influence on their lives and careers. The three famous chemists married three sisters: William Henry Perkin junior married Mina Holland, Frederic Stanley Kipping (a friend of Perkin's) married Lilian Holland (his cousin), Arthur Lapworth (temporarily assistant to Kipping) married Kathleen Holland, the youngest sister.

He was married to Helen Rochow since 1951.

Work topics

Rochow dealt among other things with organometallic chemistry, nuclear chemistry, ceramics and chemistry education. He worked on organosilicon compounds and in May 1940, independently of Richard Müller, developed a process for the production of organochlorosilanes , which is now called the Müller-Rochow synthesis . His method relied on the use of copper as a catalyst to cause the silicon to react with methyl chloride . With Albert L. Allred he introduced the Allred-Rochow scale of electronegativity in 1958 .

In an article in the New York Times he advocated the thesis that 15 billion people could be fed on earth if one switched to a vegetarian diet (production of proteins with yeast, conversion of cellulose into food). He also vehemently defended the thesis against subsequent criticism in letters to the editor.

Rochow held 38 US patents and numerous abroad. Around 160 scientific publications come from him.

Honors

In 1949 Rochow American Academy of Arts and Sciences was elected. In 1983 he received the Alfred Stock Memorial Prize . In 1966 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the TU Braunschweig. In 1992 he received an honorary doctorate from the TU Dresden "in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of organosilicon chemistry" . In 1962 he received the Perkin Medal (which earned him international recognition), in 1965 the Frederic Stanley Kipping Award in organosilicon chemistry, in 1951 the Myer Award from the American Ceramics Society, in 1968 the Chemical Pioneer Award and he was a Guggenheim Fellow.

In 1948 he received an honorary Master of Art from Harvard and in 1949 the Baekeland Medal from the ACS . For his teaching he received the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Manufacturing Chemists Association in 1970 and the Norris Award for Teaching of Chemistry from the ACS in 1971. For his inventions he received the 1973 Inventors Award from General Electric.

Fonts

  • Rochow: An introduction to the chemistry of silicones , 2nd edition, Wiley 1951
    • German translation: Introduction to the chemistry of silicones , Verlag Chemie, Weinheim 1952
  • Rochow: The chemistry of silicone , in: Comprehensive inorganic chemistry, Volume VII, Pergamon Press 1975, pp. 1323-1467
  • Rochow: Silicon and Silicones: About Stone Age tools, ancient pottery, modern ceramics, computers, materials for space travel, and how it came about , Springer 1991
  • AL Allred, EG Rochow: A scale of electronegativity based on electrostatic force, in: Journal of Inorganic and Nuclear Chemistry. Volume 5, No. 4, 1958, pp. 264-268
  • Rochow, Eduard Krahé: The Holland Sisters: Their influence on the success of their husbands Perkin, Kipping and Lapworth , Springer 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ First ethyl phenyl silicone, which the Corning Glass Works also produced at the same time. He first synthesized methyl silicone with magnesium, then without using the Rochow process.
  2. ^ Obituary for Rochow in the Harvard Gazette, May 2, 2018
  3. ↑ Honorary doctoral students of the TH / TU Dresden. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on February 2, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Rochow, Eugene G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rochow, Eugene George (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2002
Place of death Fort Myers , Florida