Guido Goldschmiedt

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Guido Goldschmiedt.jpg
Tondo with relief (Carrara marble) on a plate (Adnet marble) by Guido Goldschmiedt in the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna

Guido Goldschmiedt (born May 29, 1850 in Trieste , † August 6, 1915 in Gainfarn ) was an Austrian chemist .

life and work

Guido Goldschmiedt was born in Trieste, then part of Austria. He first studied at the commercial college in Frankfurt am Main , then from 1869 in Vienna natural sciences and from 1871 at the University of Heidelberg , where he obtained his doctorate from Robert Wilhelm Bunsen in 1872 . He switched to Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Strasbourg for two years , until in 1875 he initially worked as a private lecturer at the First Chemical Institute of the University of Vienna . In 1890 he took over a chair at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, from there in 1892 he accepted an appointment at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague and finally returned to the University of Vienna in 1911 as a full professor. This detour was evidently necessary because, for anti-Semitic reasons, at the time, both chemistry chairs at the university were not to be occupied by scientists of Jewish origin.

His field of work was the chemistry of natural substances and their structure elucidation. He covered the wide range from alkaloids such as papaverine and scutellarin to aromatics such as pyrene and fat chemistry with the first fat hardening .

Guido Goldschmiedt's academic students included Walter Fuchs and Otto Hönigschmid . In October 1901, 18-year-old Franz Kafka was also one of Goldschmiedt's students, but after only three weeks he switched to the law faculty.

Awards and memberships

  • 1885 member of the Leopoldina
  • 1892 Love Prize
  • In the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna - the university's hall of fame - there has been a bust of Goldschmiedt, created by Franz Seifert , since 1923 . As part of “purges” by the National Socialists in early November 1938, ten sculptures by Jewish or supposedly Jewish professors in the arcade courtyard were overturned or smeared with paint in connection with the “ Langemarck Celebration ”. At this point in time, the acting rector Fritz Knoll had the Arkadenhof sculptures checked; on his instructions, fifteen monuments were removed and stored in a depot, including that of Guido Goldschmiedt. After the end of the war, all damaged and removed monuments were put back in the arcade courtyard in 1947.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Guido Goldschmiedt at academictree.org, accessed on 7 February 2018th
  2. ^ Mitchell G. Ash, Josef Ehmer: University - Politics - Society . Vienna University Press, June 17, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8470-0413-4 , p. 118.
personal data
SURNAME Goldsmith, Guido
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian chemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Trieste
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1915
Place of death Gain fern