Kurt Gottlob

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Kurt Gottlob

Kurt Viktor Gottlob (born February 1, 1881 in Brno , † April 23, 1925 in Vienna ) was an Austrian chemist . He is considered the founder of emulsion polymerization and one of the discoverers of organic vulcanization accelerators . Gottlob played a key role in the development of methyl rubber , the first synthetic rubber.

Life

Kurt Viktor Gottlob came from a Moravian Jewish family and was the youngest son of the actors and actresses Maximilian Gottlob (1849–1918) and Sara Gottlob. Maximilian Gottlob founded the then renowned Viennese drama school Otto. a. Paul Hörbiger belonged. The writer Rosa Barach (born Gottlob, 1840–1913) also belonged to the wider family .

Kurt Gottlob passed his Matura in 1901 at the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna . His classmates included the economist Ludwig von Mises and the legal philosopher Hans Kelsen . After one year of voluntary military service with the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment Hoch- und Deutschmeister No. 4 , Kurt Gottlob studied chemistry with a degree in engineering at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and received his doctorate in 1906 from the University of Kiel under the then leading rubber chemist Carl Dietrich Harries (1866–1923) with a topic of rubber chemistry.

After completing his doctorate, Gottlob first worked at the rubber factory in Vysočan near Prague. In 1911 he joined the rubber research department in Elberfeld as a department head at the “paint factories”. Friedrich Bayer & Co. ”(today Bayer AG ).

When the First World War broke out in 1914, he volunteered for military service in the Austrian armed forces. After being wounded and receiving a military award, he returned to rubber research at the paint factories, now in Leverkusen, in 1915. Despite all efforts, the property level of natural rubber could not be achieved with methyl rubber . During the First World War, methyl rubber gained importance as a substitute for natural rubber.

After the end of the war in 1918, the paint factories stopped working on synthetic rubber, as Asian plantation rubber had meanwhile led to a drop in the price of natural rubber. Gottlob left the paint factories and went back to Austria. After four years at Skoda-Wetzler AG in Moosbierbaum near Tulln, he became director of the Fama-Gummi-Werke in Atzgersdorf near Vienna. The Fama-Werke became part of the Semperit Group in 1923 .

Kurt Gottlob died on April 23, 1925 in Vienna as a result of blood poisoning.

Kurt Gottlob had been married to Hedwig Bierhoff (1893–1978), with whom he had two children, since 1913. The son Rainer (1908–2008) became professor for experimental surgery in Vienna, his grandson Georg Gottlob is professor for computer science at the University of Oxford and at the TU Vienna .

plant

In 1911 Kurt Gottlob developed the so-called isoprene lamp, an apparatus for displaying isoprene through the decomposition of turpentine oil on a glow contact. This was the first time that isoprene, the basic building block of natural rubber, was easily accessible for polymer research on a laboratory scale. The patent granted in 1913 was made by the Farbenwerke, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co. (today Bayer AG) acquired.

In October 1906, Carl Duisberg (1861–1935) had commissioned a working group headed by Fritz Hofmann (1866–1956) with the representation of synthetic rubber. In 1909 the heat polymerization of several 1,3- dienes ( 2,3-dimethyl-1,3-butadiene ; 2-methyl-1,3-butadiene = isoprene; 1,3-butadiene ) was successful. The polymer of 2,3-dimethyl-1,3-butadiene, which was referred to as methyl rubber, appeared to be particularly suitable as a substitute for natural rubber. The methyl rubber proved to be not yet ready for industrialization. As part of his work to improve methyl rubber, Kurt Gottlob made contributions that were of fundamental importance for rubber technology:

In 1912 Kurt Gottlob succeeded in significantly improving the polymerisation process of butadiene hydrocarbons by converting them into aqueous emulsions with protein and similar substances. The process, patented in 1914, is considered to be the beginning of emulsion polymerization. Gottlob's Elberfeld colleague Eduard Tschunkur (1874–1946) developed the process together with Walter Bock (1895–1948) until it was ready for production. The copolymer of styrene and 1,3-butadiene produced by the emulsion process with sodium as a catalyst became the first economically important synthetic rubber under the trade name Buna .

The first organic vulcanization accelerator was also described in 1912. Kurt Gottlob, together with Fritz Hofmann, found that the addition of piperidine not only improves the resistance to oxidation of raw mixtures and vulcanizates of synthetic and natural rubber, but also that the time required for vulcanization is greatly reduced: In addition, the vulcanizates produced with vulcanization accelerators contained a significant amount more inextractable sulfur and had better mechanical properties. The paint factories had a wide range of aliphatic , cycloaliphatic and heterocyclic amines as vulcanization accelerators protected by patent. These organic accelerators developed into a very successful range of products at the paint factories under the brand name Vulkazit , which Lanxess continues to this day. In addition to Gottlob, George Oenslager (1873–1956) is also considered the inventor of the vulcanization accelerator. In 1906 he used aniline as a vulcanization additive to improve the quality of bad wild rubber grades during vulcanization. The work had not been published.

In 1912 Kurt Gottlob also identified organic compounds for the first time, e.g. B. Azo pigments are used as rubber dyes.

Fonts

Books

  • The "Calendar for the Rubber Industry", first published in 1906 and edited by Kurt Gottlob from 1910 to 1914 from Edgar Herbst, was an annually published periodical which Kurt Gottlob made known throughout the German-speaking rubber industry. After a ten-year break, Kurt Gottlob reissued the calendar for 1925. After his death, Ernst A. Hauser and Kurt Maier continued the calendar until 1931.
  • Kurt Gottlob's "Technologie der Gummiwaren" (1st edition 1915, 2nd edition 1925) was a standard work of German rubber literature that also appeared in an English-language edition

Review article

  • K. Gottlob, "About Vulcanization Accelerators", rubber newspaper 30, 303–308, 326–337 (1916)
  • K. Gottlob, "Eight Years of Working on Artificial Rubber", rubber newspaper 33, 508–509, 534–535, 551–553, 576–577, 599–600 (1919)

literature

  • Ernst Hauser, The Memory of a Rubber Researcher - Dr. Kurt Gottlob , rubber newspaper 39, 4, (1925)
  • Klaus-Dieter Röker, Kurt Gottlob - a life for rubber , Chemistry in Our Time, Volume 50, 2016, pp. 209–213

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Gottlob, On the knowledge of the types of rubber: 1. About the ozonides from African types of rubber; 2. On the effect of nitrous acid on various types of rubber, dissertation University of Kiel 1907
  2. ↑ Elisabeth Vaupel, Krieg der Chemiker, Chem. Unserer Zeit, 2014, 48, 460–475
  3. ↑ Carl Harries, Kurt Gottlob, "About the decomposition of some terpene bodies by glowing metal wires", Ann. Chem, 1911, 383, 228
  4. ↑ Kurt Gottlob, "Process for the production of artificial rubber", DE 254672, Bayer Farbenfabriken, 1912
  5. ↑ Kurt Gottlob, "Process for the production of butadiene rubber, its homologues and analogues", DE 255129, Bayer Farbenfabriken, 1912
  6. ↑ Werner Hofmann, Vulkanisation und Vulkanisationshilfsmittel, (Leverkusen 1965), p. 215
  7. ↑ Kurt Gottlob, Colored Couchouc Substances and Process of Making Same, US 726,067, 1912
personal data
SURNAME Thank goodness, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gottlob, Kurt Viktor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1925
Place of death Vienna