Georg Bredig

Georg Bredig

Georg Bredig (born October 1, 1868 in Glogau , † April 24, 1944 in New York ) was a German physical chemist. He was the founder of the field of catalysis in physical chemistry.

Life and work

Training and establishment of catalysis research

Bredig's father Max was a merchant in Glogau , the family of Jewish descent. Georg Bredig himself later converted to the Evangelical Church.

From 1886 Bredig studied natural sciences at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . He then moved to the University of Berlin , where he became aware of Professor Wilhelm Ostwald ( University of Leipzig ) and his new research area " Physical Chemistry ". He then decided to study the new area on the spot. After several years of studying and working in Ostwald's laboratory , Bredig received his doctorate in chemistry from Ostwald in 1894 with a doctoral thesis I. Contributions to the stoichiometry of ion mobility. II. About the affinity sizes of the bases . He then spent longer research stays with the other two founders of physical chemistry, Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff in Amsterdam and Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm .

In 1895 Wilhelm Ostwald called Bredig to Leipzig as his private assistant . In 1898 Bredig made the rather accidental discovery that by spraying under water colloidal solutions of e.g. B. platinum were produced. Colloidal platinum solutions were now used by Bredig as a catalyst and opened up a new special field on which Bredig worked all his life. Wilhelm Ostwald was already very interested in questions of catalysis , but Bredig can be regarded as the founder of catalysis research. Due to his sensational research, Bredig received its first public recognition in 1899, when he received the honorary award of the German Electrochemical Society . In 1901 he was able to complete his habilitation in Leipzig.

Research in Heidelberg and Zurich

In 1901 Bredig married Rosa Fraenkel from Hirschberg / Silesia. The couple had 2 children, a son Max Albert and a daughter Marianne.

In the same year Bredig was appointed "regular associate professor" at Heidelberg University. He was the first specialist representative for physical chemistry at Heidelberg University.

Here in Heidelberg Bredig was able to carry out a research program independently. Wilhelm Ostwald had a great attraction in Leipzig for budding scientists. The same thing happened in Heidelberg on a somewhat smaller scale with Georg Bredig. His reputation as a young researcher in an innovative field of chemistry attracted talent from all over the world. A selection:

• Kasimir Fajans , later became a professor at the University of Michigan ,
• Andreas von Antropoff , later professor at the University of Bonn ,
• James Henry Walton , later professor at the University of Wisconsin ,
• James William McBain , later professor at Stanford University ,
• Ivan Sergeyevich Teletov , later professor at Kharkov University

Bredig continued his sensational work with colloidally distributed inorganic catalysts in Heidelberg. He was able to prove that these catalysts were very similar to ferments, so that Bredig called them “inorganic ferments”. With van't Hoff's introduction of stereochemistry , science had come across organic compounds that had the same structure and the same molecular formula, but whose molecules could not be converted into one another by rotating them. None of the synthesis attempts had so far succeeded in producing a stereo form in isolation. Now Bredig succeeded for the first time in using catalysis to synthesize a significant excess of a stereoform.

Bredig started his large manual company in Heidelberg: The Manual of Applied Physical Chemistry .

In 1910, Bredig was offered a full professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (then the Zurich Polytechnic). Bredig accepted this call because it moved him into the group of full professors.

Activity in Karlsruhe

Just one year later, Bredig was appointed to the Technical University of Karlsruhe . Physical chemistry already had a great tradition here. The first professor was Max Le Blanc , who left Karlsruhe to succeed Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig. Then came Fritz Haber , who then became director of the newly founded " Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry " in Berlin . The third holder of the chair was Georg Bredig. The activity in Karlsruhe was initially accompanied by great public recognition. In 1914 he received the honorary award of the Institut Solvay (Brussels) and in the same year the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Zähringer Lion from the hand of the Grand Duke of Baden. Then, however, the First World War came , and the activities of Bredig's institute virtually came to a standstill. Bredig received another honor, an honorary doctorate from the University of Rostock, but the post-war years were characterized by time-consuming teaching duties and considerable administrative requirements. Bredig was elected rector for the academic year 1922/23 in 1922. For his inaugural address as rector, Bredig chose the subject of thought methods in chemistry . Bredig revealed in this lecture that he had a political attitude that can be described as liberal-democratic ; he professed pacifism and called for the " United States of Europe ". This downright prophetic stance had to stand out in nationalist circles in the extremely politically heated post-war Germany. Then there was a trivial incident. Bredig refused to award a lecture hall for a right-wing extremist event. This refusal had repercussions in the TH Senate, and Bredig let himself be carried away to the thoughtless remark that the speaker was a “Nazi agitator of the worst kind”. As a result, Bredig was sued for insult before the Karlsruhe lay judge and - to Bredig's surprise - found guilty. Only an appeal hearing before the Higher Regional Court overturned the judgment. In connection with the reporting in the press, the sentence: "Bredig is a Jew" was used for the first time.

Regardless of these adverse events, Bredig enjoyed great recognition. He became a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1930 he received his second honorary doctorate from the ETH Zurich.

Persecution and exile

When the National Socialists came to power, Bredig's position became increasingly difficult. The Nazi government refrained from immediate dismissal of Bredig, as three of the four chemistry professors in Karlsruhe were Jews. The public attacks were mainly directed against Bredig. In a letter to the ministry, one of Bredig's employees called for "finally to put an end to the flattening, internationalization and rejuvenation ... completely". The letter has been preserved in the General State Archives in Karlsruhe. A preliminary investigation was initiated against Bredig, and his inaugural speech and the defamation process came back on the agenda. Eventually it was agreed that Bredig would retire on October 1, 1933, his 65th birthday.

At the same time as these depressing events, Bredig hit another terrible blow: the death of his wife in 1937, Bredig's son Max Albert emigrated to the USA with the help of Kasimir Fajans. During the November pogroms of 1938, around 500 Karlsruhe Jews were arrested, including Georg Bredig and the husband of his daughter Marianne, the banker Dr. Viktor Homburger. That night the Homburger bank was devastated. Thereupon Bredig and his son-in-law Homburger decided to leave Germany if possible. Bredig managed to emigrate to the Netherlands in 1939 thanks to the help of a van't Hoff employee, Professor Ernst Cohen. The three Homburger sons (from their first marriage) also came to safety on a children's transport to England. But Viktor and Marianne Homburger got involved in the " Wagner-Bürckel-Aktion " of the Gauleiter of Baden, who arrested all Jews in Baden in 1940 in order to bring them to the French concentration camp Camp de Gurs . Bredig made his exit to the USA from Utrecht, which he succeeded in 1940. The remaining Ernst Cohen died in Auschwitz. In 1941 Max Albert Bredig managed to get his sister and brother-in-law released from the Gurs camp and allowed to travel to the USA. The family was reunited there.

Georg Bredig then lived with his son in New York and died on April 24, 1944.

Scientific importance

Georg Bredig, as one of the fundamental physical chemists and as the actual founder of the field of catalysis, has a high status as a scientist. He is one of the outstanding German researchers of the 20th century.

Publications

Georg Bredig has written more than 200 scientific publications, mostly articles in scientific journals, including a whole series of patent specifications. Bredig was the editor of the "Handbook of Applied Physical Chemistry in Individual Representations"; 14 volumes of this work appeared between 1905 and 1927. In the years after his retirement, Bredig wrote his autobiography with the title “His Friends in Memory”, o. O. 1938. Since no publisher could dare to publish such a work, the book was produced as a private print and sent to befriended scientific colleagues distributed. It is therefore extremely rare. A full list of publications can be found in the biography of Valentin Wehefritz.

Work

Bredig initially dealt with ion mobility and the dissociation of weak bases . In 1899 he was the first to prove the existence of zwitterions .

Awards

• 1914 Honorary Prize from the Solvay Institute
• 1929 honorary doctorate from the University of Rostock
• 1930 honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich
• Knight's Cross of the Grand Duchy of Baden

Works

• In memory of his friends . 1938 (autobiography).
• Thought methods of chemistry . 1923.
• Handbook of Applied Physical Chemistry . 1907
• Work from the Chemical Institute of Heidelberg University . 1907.

literature

• Werner Kuhn: Georg Bredig . In: Chemischeberichte 95 (1962), pp. XLVII-LXIII. doi: 10.1002 / cber.19620950104
• Lexicon of natural scientists . 1st edition. Heidelberg, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8274-1026-6 .
• Bredig for the 60th birthday . F. Haber, Journal of Electrochemistry and Applied Physical Chemistry, October 1928, pp. 677-679.
• 100 years of the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe . Ulrich Schindelwolf, Bunsen-Magazin, 2nd year, 6/2000.
• Valentin Wehefritz: pioneer of physical chemistry. Prof. Dr. Georg Bredig . Dortmund 1998 (= University in Exile. 3).

Web links

Commons : Georg Bredig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Georg Bredig in the catalog of the German National Library
• uni-kiel.de: Luther, Robert (PDF; 2.7 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Georg Bredig at academictree.org, accessed on January 14, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Werner Kuhn: Georg Bredig . In: Chemischeberichte 95 (1962), pp. XLVII-LXIII. doi: 10.1002 / cber.19620950104
3. ↑ Bredig, Georg ( Memento of February 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on www.cartage.org.lb.
4. ↑ Bredig, Georg. In memory of his friends , 1938, p. A3.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Bredig, Georg. In memory of his friends , 1938, p. A4.