Mordko Hershkovich

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Mordko Herschkowitsch (born February 29, 1868 in Tusora ; † March 9, 1932 ) was a Russian- born German chemist .

Life

Herschkowitsch was the son of a Bessarabian settler and left his family at the age of seven because he was mistreated by his stepmother. In Rovno, Ukraine, he wandered the streets and ate vegetable waste until the Jewish community took care of him. He was able to attend school and was then a pharmacist's assistant. He studied in Odessa from 1893 to 1895, where he also earned his studies as a pharmacist's assistant and had to interrupt it at regular intervals. From 1895 he studied in Leipzig, where he was a pupil of Wilhelm Ostwald and received his doctorate in 1898 with a dissertation in electrochemistry (on the knowledge of metal alloys). From 1898 he was a member of the glass work bulkhead and comrade in Jena and from 1902 was he by Ernst Abbe tentatively to the company Carl Zeiss (Optical workshops) brought, at that time still had not a chemical laboratory. He convinced with his extensive knowledge of inorganic and organic chemistry (pharmaceutical chemistry) and his ability to build apparatuses with the simplest of tools and to carry out investigations with them. He supervised the foundry of the Zeiss works, introduced the physical procedures for the control of the metallic materials and various technical innovations (e.g. for the control of the polishing red for glass, development of a bismuth alloy for the casting of empties with exact adherence to the dimensions, development a hard rubber mixture for telescopes, refining the Canada balsam for cementing lenses, developing a preparation for chlorine-free oxygen).

He created an apparatus for photometry in any spatial direction that was used at Schott to evaluate the glasses for incandescent glass lighting. He succeeded (starting at Schott) in the production of optically perfect quartz glass, which was used especially for microscope lenses (first presented at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900). Shortly before the First World War, he was also the first to produce porous glass by sintering glass powder. It was used for diaphragms and filters.

He was known to chemists in Germany as the representative of Carl Zeiss at the general meetings of the Association of German Chemists.

His daughter Elsbeth Danziger (1904–1942) received her doctorate in 1931 in Jena in natural sciences and was murdered with her two children in Auschwitz in 1942 (Herschkowitsch was Jewish). A stumbling block on her parents' house in Jena reminds of her and her children.

Fonts

  • Contribution to the knowledge of metal alloys, Journal for Physical Chemistry, Volume 27, 1898, Issue 1, p. 123
  • About the transformation of rock crystal into the amorphous state, Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, Volume 46, 1903, pp. 408-414, online
  • About the oxidation of ammonia by potassium permanganate and about the influence of ammonium salts on the same, Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, Volume 65, 1909
  • About the decomposition of oxalates, Journal for inorganic and general chemistry, Volume 115, 1921
  • For the titrimetric determination of copper with potassium iodide, Journal for inorganic and general chemistry, Volume 146, 1925

literature

  • PH Prausnitz: Herschkowitsch, Mordko, 1868-1932, Angewandte Chemie, Volume 45, 1932, p. 317.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John of Zawidzki, memories, Warsaw 1934, quoted by Ulf Messow, students and assistants of Jewish origin with Wilhelm Ostwald, notices of Wilhelm Ostwald Society, Volume 23, 2018, Issue 2, pp 40f
  2. ↑ Brief biography in Poggendorff, Biographisches Handwörterbuch, 1904
  3. ↑ Published in Zeitschrift fur physical chemistry, Volume 27, 1898
  4. ↑ a b Obituary Prausnitz, Angewandte Chemie, Volume 45, 1932, p. 317
  5. ↑ Elsbeth Danziger , History of Jena, Stolperstein
personal data
SURNAME Hershkovich, Mordko
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Tusora
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1932