Max Conrad (chemist)

Habilitation 1875 Würzburg

Max Conrad (born June 5, 1848 in Munich , † December 31, 1920 in Aschaffenburg ) was a German chemist .

Life

Conrad studied medicine at the University of Munich and after the Franco-German War in 1870/71, inspired by lectures by Justus von Liebig and Emil Erlenmeyer , which he had heard in Munich, chemistry at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg . During his studies he became a member of the Academic Choral Society Würzburg in the Sondershäuser Association and the AGV Munich . He heard from Adolph Strecker and received his doctorate from Johannes Wislicenus in 1872. He then completed his habilitation in Würzburg in 1875 and was appointed professor at the Aschaffenburg Forestry University in 1878 . From 1893, after his retirement in Munich, Erlenmeyer did research at the Aschaffenburg Forestry College thanks to his son-in-law Hermann Dingler , where he was on friendly terms with his former student Conrad. In 1911, Conrad, like the other professors, retired when the Forestry University (the successor to the old academy) in Aschaffenburg was dissolved and moved entirely to Munich.

He was in the national liberal party and founded a natural science association in Aschaffenburg in which he organized geological and mineralogical excursions in the area, and was the curator of the city's natural science collections. During the First World War, he temporarily took over the management of the secondary school for girls in Aschaffenburg.

He had been married to Adelheid Streiter since 1881, with whom he had four sons and a daughter. Two sons died in the First World War.

plant

He dealt with alkaloids, plant substances (such as malonic acid derivatives) and the synthesis of organic compounds, often using the acetoacetic ester , which his doctoral supervisor Wislicenus studied a lot and used for syntheses . A synthesis of quinoline (1887) by condensation of aniline with - keto - esters ( Conrad Limpach quinoline synthesis ) is named after him and Leonhard Limpach . ${\displaystyle \beta }$

In 1882 (with Max Guthzeit), 20 years before Emil Fischer, he succeeded in synthesizing diethylmalonylurea, later known as a sleeping pill under the name of veronal .

He published around a hundred papers, including on physical chemistry (reaction rate of ether formation).

Honors and memberships

Since 1887 he was a member of the Leopoldina .

literature

• Bernhard Lepsius , obituary by Max Conrad, Reports of the German Chemical Society 54, A92 – A93 (1921)
• Klaus Koschel and G. Sauer, On the history of the Chemical Institute of the University of Würzburg, self-published 1968, p. 33.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Otto Grübel, Special Houses Association of German Student Choral Societies (SV): Cartel address book. As of March 1, 1914. Munich 1914, p. 41.
2. ↑ Otto Grübel, Special Houses Association of German Student Choral Societies (SV): Cartel address book. As of March 1, 1914. Munich 1914, p. 75.