Ludwig moon
Ludwig Mond (born March 7, 1839 in Kassel , † December 11, 1909 in London ) was a German-British chemist and industrialist .
Life and family
Ludwig Mond came from a Jewish family. He was born as the son of the merchant Meier Bär Mond (grave of honor in the Jewish cemetery in Kassel ) and his wife Henriette, nee. Levinsohn was born in Kassel and grew up there. He attended the polytechnic in his hometown, where Friedrich Wöhler and Robert Bunsen taught, and from 1855 studied chemistry with Hermann Kolbe in Marburg and Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg . During his studies in Heidelberg he became a member of the Corps Rhenania there . Moon left college without a degree due to financial problems. In 1862 he went toWidnes in England, then worked a. a. in Holland , then settled permanently in England in 1867 and became a British citizen in 1880. In 1886 he married his cousin Frida Löwenthal. Ludwig Mond left two sons who played a role in public life:
- Sir Robert Ludwig Mond (1867–1938), chemist and archaeologist ;
- Sir Alfred Moritz Mond , from 1928 Lord Melchett of Langford (1868–1930), MP, 1921–1922 British Minister of Health, namesake of the “World Controller” Mustapha Mond in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World .
After his death, Ludwig Mond was buried in the family mausoleum in St. Pancras Cemetery in London.
Act
In Germany, after completing his studies, Mond worked in a soda factory in Kassel from 1858. After moving to Widnes in England in 1862, he worked in a factory in which soda was produced using the Leblanc process . In 1864 he directed the construction of a soda factory in Utrecht . In 1863 he patented the recovery of sulfur from residues containing calcium sulphide using the Leblanc process, which was later used in up to 40 factories. However, due to the inefficient process and low sulfur prices in England, it was not very successful. In 1872, Mond acquired a license from Ernest Solvay to produce soda by the ammonia-soda process ( Solvay process ), with a license fee of 8 shillings per ton. He then founded the Brunner Mond Comp. In 1873 together with John Tomlinson Brunner . in Winnington, Northwich, Cheshire and became its technical and organizational director. After major technical and financial challenges in the early days, 800 tons of soda were produced in the following year - in 1877 it was already 8,000 tons. 1881 the company has been limited company Brunner, Mond & Company Ltd. transformed and developed into the most important soda factory in the world over the next 20 years. In 1926 the company under Alfred Mond finally merged with other companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Mond and Brunner were very social and in 1884 already granted one week of paid vacation per year, continued to pay wages in the event of illness and established medical care. In 1895 they introduced the 49¼ hour week.
Mond tried to optimize the Solvay process more and more and in 1879 found a new process to compensate for the ammonia loss that occurred. In a specially developed process of coal gasification , in which low-quality coal was converted with steam and hot air, it was possible to convert about half of the nitrogen bound in the coal into ammonia. After separating the ammonia by washing it out, the residual gas mixture, which contained hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, could be used as a clean-burning energy source ( moon gas ). In 1910, 3 million tons of coal were converted worldwide using this process. In 1901 he founded the South Staffordshire Mond Gas Company , which received a supply monopoly in the English Black Country and existed until the nationalization of the gas industry in 1948.
In further attempts to obtain other, higher-quality metal chlorides in the Solvay process instead of calcium chloride, Mond and his colleague Carl Langer developed a process for the production of pure nickel by thermolysis of tetracarbonyl nickel as an intermediate product ( Mond process ). Although this process enabled the production of particularly pure nickel, the nickel industry initially had no interest in it. Then, after opening a mine near Ontario and building a smelter in Clydach , Mond founded the Mond Nickel Company in 1900 , which ten years later was already producing 3000 tons of moon nickel per year. In addition to tetracarbonylnickel, Mond and his colleagues produced numerous other metal carbonyls - such as iron pentacarbonyl and diiron nonacarbonyl , as well as metal carbonyls from cobalt, molybdenum and ruthenium - and are therefore considered to be one of the discoverers of this important class of substances.
Mond was involved as Vice President of the Chemical Society in London and the Royal Institution of Great Britain . The Royal Chemical Society presents the Ludwig Mond Award (formerly Ludwig Mond Lectureship ) every year . In 1891 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Society .
Mond was also an important art collector and patron . He bequeathed his painting collection, which was one of the most important private collections in England, to the National Gallery in London. He donated foundations to his hometown Kassel. They paid tribute to him by naming a street, which was reversed at the time of National Socialism. After 1945, today's Ludwig-Mond-Strasse was named after him.
Awards
Honorary doctorate from the Universities of Padua (1892) and Heidelberg (1896), D. Sc. (hon.) in Oxford , Order of the Crown of Italy .
Fonts
- with Friedrich Quincke and Carl Langer: Action of carbon monoxide on nickel in J. Chem. Soc. Trans. 57 (1890) pp. 749-753; doi : 10.1039 / CT8905700749 .
- with Friedrich Quincke: About a volatile compound of iron with carbon oxide
literature
- Julia Laura Rischbieter: Henriette Hertz: patron and founder of the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome . Stuttgart 2004 (Pallas Athene; 14) [with sections on Ludwig Mond, H. Hertz was a friend of the Mond family].
- Thomas Adam, Transnational Philanthropy: the Mond Family's Support for Public Institutions in Western Europe from 1890 to 1938, New York 2016.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Entry on Mond, Ludwig (1839 - 1909) in the archive of the Royal Society , London
- ↑ a b c Rudolf Lessing: Ludwig Mond † . In: Journal of Applied Chemistry . tape 23 , no. 2 , January 14, 1910, p. 74 , doi : 10.1002 / anie.19100230213 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Claus Priesner: Mond, Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 30 f. ( Digitized version ).
- ↑ RSC: Ludwig Mond Award
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Moon, Ludwig |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-British chemist and industrialist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 7, 1839 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | kassel |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 11, 1909 |
| Place of death | London |