Günther Ohloff

Günther Ohloff (born July 21, 1924 in Tapiau near Königsberg , † November 9, 2005 in Bernex near Geneva ) was an important German odorant chemist and researcher .

Life

Günther Ohloff grew up in East Prussia and, after being seriously injured in the battle of Stalingrad , studied pharmacy at the Universities of Königsberg and Erlangen , and chemistry at the Technical University of Dresden . Ohloff completed his dissertation there in Heinrich Wienhaus's group with a thesis on the condensation of terpenes with formaldehyde ( Prins reaction ) and received his doctorate in 1951.

Act

After two years of industrial activity at Schimmel & Co. in Miltitz (Leipzig) , the most important fragrance manufacturer of the time, Ohloff left East Germany in 1953 to work in the research department of Dragoco , Holzminden , under Erich Klein. In 1959 he became an employee of Günther Otto Schenck at the then Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry in Mülheim , where he dealt with the use of singlet oxygen in preparative organic synthesis, ene reactions and sigmatropic rearrangements . In 1962 Ohloff returned to industry and took over the management of the process research group at the fragrance manufacturer Firmenich in Geneva , where he was promoted to head of overall research and a member of the board in 1968, which he remained until his retirement in 1989.

His scientific work, which is documented in 228 publications and 111 patents, was rooted in molecular thinking and focused on the configuration and reactivity of terpenes, the industrial synthesis of fragrances, and structure-odor relationships. Ohloff was considered the leading expert in systematic structure-activity research of odorous substances and established a series of empirical and intuitively derived " rules " for predicting odor properties , such as the " Triaxial rule of the ambrag odor ". In addition, in collaboration with Albert Eschenmoser , he discovered the Eschenmoser fragmentation , which is therefore often referred to as “ Eschenmoser – Ohloff fragmentation ”.

Ohloff has often boldly proposed hypotheses that appear bold and carefully tested them experimentally. Such theories also included the effects of fragrances on human emotions and social behavior. He liked to move in the circle of creative lateral thinkers and thus received important impulses for original scientific work. His 1990 book “ Fragrances and olfactory senses. The Molecular World of Fragrances ”is considered to be the standard work of fragrance chemistry and was completely revised, supplemented and expanded by Wilhelm Pickenhagen and Philip Kraft , reissued in English in 2011 under the title“ Scent and Chemistry - The Molecular World of Odors ”.

Honors

• Leopold Ružička Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society (1967)
• Ernest Guenther Award from the American Chemical Society (1974)
• Hackford Jones Prize of the British Society of Perfumery (1980)
• Otto Wallach plaque of the GDCh (1981)
• RH Wright Award from Simon Fraser University , Canada (1988)

Publications (selection)

• Fragrances and sense of smell. The molecular world of fragrances , Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-540-52560-2 . English translation: Scent and Fragrances: The Fascination of Odors and Their Chemical Perspectives , Springer Verlag, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-387-57108-6 .
• Earthly scents, heavenly lust , Birkhäuser Verlag 2000, ISBN 3-7643-2753-7 . English edition for 2012 announced by Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta, Zurich.
• Fragrances - signals of the emotional world , Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta, Zurich, 2004, ISBN 978-3-906390-30-7 .
• together with Wilhelm Pickenhagen and Philip Kraft : " Scent and Chemistry - The Molecular World of Odors " , Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta, Zurich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-906390-66-6 .

See also

• Smell qualities

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Günther Ohloff: About the condensation of terpenes with formaldehyde. , University thesis, Technische Hochschule Dresden, dissertation from June 11, 1951.
2. ↑ Wolfgang Giersch, Rerald Uhde, Ferdinand Näf: Günther Ohloff - Chemist & Pioneer in the Art of Perfumery, Chimia 2004 , 58 , 65-66.
3. ↑ A. Eschenmoser, D. Felix and G. Ohloff: A novel fragmentation of cyclic α, β-unsaturated carbonyl systems: synthesis of exalton and rac- muscone from cyclododecanone. Preliminary communication . In: Helvetica Chimica Acta . 50, No. 2, 1967, pp. 708-713. doi : 10.1002 / hlca.19670500232 .
4. ↑ J. Schreiber, D. Felix, A. Eschenmoser, M. Winter, F. Gautschi, KH Schulte-Elte, E. Sundt, G. Ohloff, J. Kalovoda, H. Kaufmann, P. Wieland, G. Anner Helvetica Chimica Acta , 1967 , 50 , (7), 2101-2108.
5. ↑ D. Felix, J. Schreiber, G. Ohloff, A. Eschenmoser Helvetica Chimica Acta , 1971 , 54 , (8), 2896-2912.
6. ↑ Ferdinand Näf, Wilhelm Pickenhagen: Günther Ohloff (1924-2005) , news from the Chemistry 2006 , 54 , 335th
7. ^ Scent and Chemistry .