Friedrich Kehrmann

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Johann August Ludwig Friedrich Kehrmann (born May 8, 1864 in Koblenz , † March 4, 1929 in Lausanne ) was a German chemist who lived and worked mainly in Switzerland .

Childhood and studies

Friedrich Kehrmann was the oldest of four children of the champagne manufacturer and wine merchant Carl Otto Kehrmann. His brother was the painter Jean Louis Kehrmann . From an early age he became interested in the natural sciences, collecting butterflies and minerals. At the age of 17, he was producing phosphotungstic acid and synthesizing complex compounds in the makeshift laboratory in the attic of his father's house . At that time he developed his specialist knowledge autodidactically from the "Short Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry" by Adolph Strecker . In 1884 he began to study methods of analytical chemistry in the Fresenius laboratory in Wiesbaden; a year later he was appointed assistant to Carl Remigius Fresenius . He completed his studies in the summer of 1886 at the University of Bonn. In the autumn of the same year he moved to Basel in order to prepare his dissertation there under the guidance of Rudolf Nietzki , which he completed in 1887 (“Contributions to the knowledge of quinones and related bodies”).

Act

A little later, in the autumn of 1887, he took up a position as assistant professor to Adolf Claus at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau . At that time he was researching and publishing a number of papers on quinones and iodinated phenolsulfonic acids, and for the first time observed the phenomenon of steric hindrance . Between 1890 and 1893 he took on the role of assistant at the Polytechnic School in Aachen under Alexander Classen . There he continued his research on phosphotungstic acids and mineral complexes and discovered a method for the electrolytic decomposition of cobalt compounds. He also worked intensively with quinones and azine dyes, developed a new method for the synthesis of Eurhodine and Rosinduline and published a general theory of steric hindrance.

In the fall of 1893 he was appointed assistant professor to Carl Graebe at the University of Geneva . From 1895 he was a private lecturer in organic chemistry and in the following years led more than 70 doctoral theses. His main areas of work were the investigation of quinones and quinone dyes: azines , oxazines , thiazines and similar classes of compounds. Furthermore, he gained essential knowledge about oxonium and carbonium salts .

Due to the meager financial resources, he was forced to accept a position in the industry in 1902 and moved to the Cassella color works in Frankfurt am Main . But his job there did not satisfy him, in 1905 he moved back to Geneva and initially continued his work despite the economic problems. In 1907 Kehrmann was appointed professor of organic chemistry at the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Mulhouse under director Emilio Noelting . There he continued his research in addition to teaching and supervised a number of doctoral theses.

In 1909 he married Maria Pfenning, whom he had met in Geneva. A year later he followed a call to the University of Lausanne and was responsible for teaching organic chemistry and dyes. He stayed in Lausanne until his death and supervised more than 80 doctoral theses during this time.

Publications

Kehrmann published a total of 336 scientific papers between 1886 and 1928, mainly in the Chemical Reports , the Annals of Chemistry and in Helvetica Chimica Acta . A five-volume series "Collected Papers" was published between 1922 and 1928 by Thieme Verlag. He was also the author of the chapter on Oxonium Compounds in the Houben-Weyl and held a number of patents.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Johann August Ludwig Friedrich Kehrmann at academictree.org, accessed on February 15, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Kehrmann, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kehrmann, Johann August Ludwig Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Koblenz
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 1929
Place of death Lausanne