Robert Griessbach

Paul Robert Grießbach (born April 3, 1886 in Pieschen , † December 25, 1970 in Wolfen ) was a German chemist. He applied for a patent for the world's first synthetic resin ion exchanger . This was manufactured from 1938 in the Wolfen paint factory under the trade name Wofatit.

Life

Grießbach was born as the son of a future headmaster in the Dresden district of Pieschen . From 1892 to 1900 he attended a community school in Adorf, Vogtland . This was followed by attending a royal teachers' college, which he left in 1906 when he received his school-leaving certificate. This enabled Grießbach to work as an assistant teacher. He found a corresponding job in Oelsnitz in the Vogtland region , where he taught until 1909. After acquiring his university entrance qualification, Grießbach began to study pedagogy in Leipzig. Only a short time later he also began studying mathematics and natural sciences. Due to the First World War , which required a four-year break from studying, Grießbach did not start studying again until 1919. Shortly afterwards he got a job as a scientific assistant at the Physics Institute of the University of Leipzig. There he received his doctorate in 1920 with Wilhelm Böttger and Max Le Blanc (whose assistant he was from 1919 to 1921) with the "Contribution to the knowledge of precipitation equilibria". This also revealed Grießbach's future research focus, chemistry. In 1921 he moved to BASF on the Rhine in Ludwigshafen. There he started his work in the renowned ammonia laboratory in Ludwigshafen-Oppau , headed by Alwin Mittasch , where he soon became head of a working group. At BASF, Grießbach mainly dealt with problems of fertilizer production and the importance of iodine for arable soils. In 1929 he followed a call to Wolfen . There he took over the management of the inorganic scientific laboratory of the local paint factory of IG Farben . In 1954 he received the title of professor for physical chemistry and in 1955 he retired.

plant

At BASF, Grießbach mainly dealt with nitrogen fertilizers and at IG Farben in Wolfen with problems of industrial chemistry such as copper salt production for pest control, processing of clay and water treatment. From 1933 he researched ion exchangers with silicon dioxide and from 1935 with synthetic resin and developed the Wolfatit synthetic resin ion exchangers. Among other things, he applied this to water treatment, desalination of cane sugar solutions and copper recovery. In 1949 he published a book on ion exchangers.

Honors

He received the National Prize 2nd Class for Science and Technology and in 1955 the Clemens Winkler Medal .

Fonts

• Exchange adsorbents in the food industry, Leipzig: Barth 1949
• Exchange adsorption in theory and practice: general part, Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1957 (also published in Russian in 1963)

swell

• Friedrich Wolf in Well-known university professors at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig ; Issue 4; Leipzig 1983; Pp. 15-19.
• Winfried Pötsch et al. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989.