Hermann Trommsdorff

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Christian Wilhelm Hermann Trommsdorff (born September 24, 1811 in Erfurt ; † July 3, 1884 ibid) was a German pharmacist, entrepreneur and chemist.

Live and act

He was the youngest son of the famous pharmacist Johann Bartholomäus Trommsdorff . He also became a pharmacist and owned a chemical factory in Erfurt, famous at the time, which shipped its chemical preparations worldwide. The factory was built in 1841/42. A branch in Gispersleben near Erfurt was opened in 1871/72. Trommsdorff was a competitor of Merck in his time (with whom he had also learned and worked as an assistant). In the 1860s, Trommsdorff tried to take over the French business from Merck in open competition. However, no hostility developed and when Tromssdorff became seriously ill, Carl Merck occasionally helped him out with products that Trommsdorff could not produce. After Trommsdorff's death, the factory fell into stranger hands following inheritance disputes and experienced a decline before it was taken over by Merck in 1892.

He is also known as a pioneer of photochemistry when he discovered in 1834 that crystals of plant-derived santonin burst when exposed to sunlight. The mechanism responsible for this was only clarified in 2007 (after light absorption, the size and shape of the molecules in the crystal change significantly).

He also published about sylvic acid, gentianin, amygdalin , stramonin, chemical substances in the gentian root, urson, brucine, daturin, fichtelite, shimmering material.

His son Hugo was also a chemist and published on water composition and statistics of water and bodies of water as well as the dimensional analysis of organic substances.

literature

  • Ernst Biltz : biography of Christian Wilhelm Hermann Trommsdorff, Halle an der Saale 1884
  • Irene Lauterbach: Christian Wilhelm Hermann Trommsdorff (1811–1884): On the life and work of a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft 1999

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carsten Burhop, Michael Kißener, Hermann Schäfer, Joachim Scholtyseck: Merck: From a pharmacy to a global corporation, CH Beck 2018
  2. ↑ Derek Lowe, Das Chemiebuch, Librero 2017, p. 122. Tromssdorff published on this in 1834 in Liebigs Annalen, Volume 11.
  3. ↑ Natarajan et al. a., The photoarrangement of Santonin is a single crystal-to-crystal reaction, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Volume 129, 2007, p. 32
  4. ^ Journal of the General Austrian Pharmacists' Association, Volume 10, 1872, p. 32, google books
  5. ^ Theodor Gerding, Geschichte der Chemie, Leipzig 1867, p. 222
personal data
SURNAME Trommsdorff, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Trommsdorff, Christian Wilhelm Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist, entrepreneur and pharmacist
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1884
Place of death Erfurt