Peter semolina

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Peter Grieß in England
obituary

Johann Peter Grieß (also Griess , born September 6, 1829 in Kirchhosbach, today a district of Waldkappel , † August 30, 1888 in Bournemouth ) was a German chemist.

life and work

After attending a private agricultural school and the higher trade school in Kassel as well as a short detour in a Hessian hussar regiment, Grieß enrolled at the University of Jena in 1850, before moving to the University of Marburg in the fall of 1851 . There he studied philology ; During this time he lived with the cloth maker Hering (WS 1851/52), with the master bricklayer Dauber (SS 1853) and with the city servant Cöster (WS 1853/54). Corps student excesses and an accompanying relegation ended his stay in Marburg in 1853 and took him to Munich.

At the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , he attended lectures with Justus von Liebig and Moritz Carrière without ever having been enrolled .

In 1854, with ministerial approval and after serving a prison sentence , he returned to Marburg and studied chemistry in particular with Hermann Kolbe ; However, he did not take an academic final examination.

In 1856 he left university to earn a living. After his temporary workplace, the Oehlersche tar factory in Offenbach am Main, burned down, he returned to Marburg.

His teacher Kolbe took him on and recommended him in 1858 to work with August Wilhelm von Hofmann at his London laboratory at the Royal College of Chemistry. His studies on the aromatic diazo compounds , on the basis of which synthetic dyes, azo dyes (cf. also tar color ), are produced, and which he z. Some of it had already started in Marburg, soon attracted the attention of the experts gathered in the Royal Society of Chemistry . He presented the first diazo compound by introducing nitrous gases into picric acid solution. In 1858 Griess had found that diazonium salts can generally be prepared by the action of nitrous acid on aromatic amines , without being clear about the structure of these compounds. With a number of azo dyes produced on this basis, he competed with other dye chemists of his time, such as B. Otto Nikolaus Witt and Carl Alexander von Martius . A lively and friendly exchange of ideas connected him for many years with the chemist Heinrich Caro , a director and board member of BASF .

The German chemist Heinrich Böttinger, a pupil of Hofmann, helped him to get a job as a brewing chemist in the famous brewery of Samuel Allsopp & Sons in Burton-upon-Trent in 1862 . On September 22, 1869 he married the doctor's daughter Louisa Anna Mason, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. She died very early on July 19, 1886. Grieß died two years later and was buried in the family grave in Burton-upon-Trent next to his wife.

His new job sometimes forced him to give up his previously familiar studies, but he always found opportunities to enrich the research direction he had developed with a variety of discoveries. In 1877 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Ludwig Maximilians University in person for his academic achievements . In 1885 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In the field of azo dyes, Grieß had registered a number of patents which he could easily sell to British companies or his friend Caro from BASF. At Caro's suggestion, he also acted as an appraiser in patent litigation for BASF.

Grieß's sample

Peter Grieß has also left traces in medicine - the Grieß'sche sample named after him, proof of nitrite. The substance is heated dry with MnO 2 or Pb 3 O 4 , during which HNO 2 vapors develop which turn a filter paper moistened with Grieß's reagent red.

Grieß's reagent

A one percent solution of sulfanilic acid in 30 percent acetic acid and a 0.1 percent solution of naphthylamine are mixed together. If a sample turns pink after adding the reagent, nitrite (NO 2 - ) has been detected.

literature

  • Berthold Peter Anft:  Grieß, Johann Peter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 66 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Günther Bugge: The book of the great chemists. Volume 2. Verlag Chemie, 1974, ISBN 3-527-25021-2 , p. 217 ff.
  • Otto Krätz: The portrait: Peter Griess (1829–1888). In: Chemistry in Our Time. Vol. 10, No. 2, 1976, pp. 42-47.
  • Christoph Meinel: Chemistry at the University of Marburg since the beginning of the 19th century. A contribution to their development as a university subject (= Academia Marburgensis. Volume 3). Marburg 1978 (therein bibliographical references to Griess' early publications, p. 525 f.).
  • Carl Oppenheimer :  semolina, Johann Peter . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 49, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, pp. 547-550.
  • Curt Schuster: Science and Technology. They met at BASF during the first decades of the company's history (= series of publications from the company archive of BASF Aktiengesellschaft. Volume 14). Ludwigshafen 1976 (VI: Peter Griess).
  • Rüdiger Stolz ( arrangement ): Chymia Jenensis. Chymists, chemists and chemists in Jena (= Alma Mater Jenensis. Volume 6). Jena 1989 (Johann Peter Griess, p. 74 ff.).
  • August Wingler: Peter Grieß. Life and work of a great dye chemist. Bayer, Leverkusen undated
  • Robert Wizinger-Aust : Peter Griess and his time. In: Angewandte Chemie. Vol. 70, No. 8, 1958, pp. 199-204.
  • Obituary for Peter Grieß , Ber. d. dt. Chem. Ges. 24 III, pp. 1006-1078, by AW v. Hofmann and E. Fischer exchanging letters with A. Bopp.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary by AW Hofmann, pages 1014 and 1015.
  2. ^ Royal College of Chemistry
  3. ^ Royal Society of Chemistry
  4. ↑ Member entry by Peter Griess at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on December 1, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Semolina, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Semolina, Johann Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Kirchhosbach, today Waldkappel
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1888
Place of death Bournemouth , England