Paul Albrecht Ferdinand Gmelin

Paul Albrecht Ferdinand Gmelin (born January 11, 1822 in Rottenburg am Neckar , † September 24, 1875 in Göppingen ) was a German pharmacist , lecturer and entrepreneur .

Life

Gmelin learned from 1836 in his father's pharmacy in Rottenburg and remained there for some time as an assistant. He then worked in the Epting pharmacy in Calw and in the Hoffmann pharmacy in Landau an der Isar . He then spent two years as assistant to Professor Fleischer in Hohenheim . From 1845 to 1846 he studied pharmacy at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and graduated in 1846 with the pharmacist's exam .

From 1849 to 1854 Paul Gmelin worked in his father's pharmacy in Rottenburg and after it was sold he bought the Untere Apotheke in Vaihingen / Enz , which he ran from 1854 to 1863. He also sold the pharmacy in Vaihingen again. Apparently, the job as a pharmacy owner did not fulfill him.

During his retirement in Stuttgart, he worked part-time from 1865 to 1867 as a lecturer in pharmaceutical botany and merchandise at the Stuttgart Polytechnic . Together with Albert Zeller as a partner, he founded a mineral oil factory in Eislingen / Fils in 1866 and worked there until his death.

Gmelin belonged to Württemberg pharmacists who were inspired by a great entrepreneurial spirit. The work in the pharmacy did not satisfy him. Only as an entrepreneur was he able to utilize his scientific knowledge. He made shale oil, which was then made into machine oil and other oil products. He also made technical fats. The company still exists today under the name Zeller + Gmelin .

His grandson was the physicist Paul Ludwig Christoph Gmelin .

literature

• Wolfgang-Hagen Hein, Holm-Dietmar Schwarz (Hrsg.): German pharmacist biography . Volume 1: A – L (= publications of the International Society for the History of Pharmacy eV , Volume 43.) Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-8047-0518-9 , p. 213.