Siegfried Hünig

Siegfried Hünig (2008)

Siegfried Helmut Hünig (born April 3, 1921 in Radebeul ) is a German chemist . The Hünig base ( diisopropylethylamine ) is named after him.

Live and act

Hünig was born in the house of his father, a master tailor, at Gellertstrasse 5 in Radebeul . The house was the former home of Klara and Richard Plöhn (friend of Karl May ) until Plöhn 's death and Klara's subsequent marriage to Karl May. The villa, which has been rebuilt several times, has since been demolished and replaced by a new building.

After studying at the Technical University of Dresden , he received his doctorate in 1943 under Wolfgang Langenbeck with a thesis “ On the condensation of acetaldehyde and crotonaldehyde ”. In 1945 he switched to Hans Meerwein at the Philipps University of Marburg as a research assistant . In 1950 he completed his habilitation in Marburg with a thesis " On the catalytic condensation of crotonaldehyde with secondary amines under exclusion of acids " and was appointed associate professor in 1956. In 1959 he went to Saul Winstein in Los Angeles for a few months and in 1960 he accepted a call to an associate professorship at the LMU Munich , but in 1961, after a call to the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, he switched to Chair I for Organic Chemistry .

During this time he restructured the chemistry course and established a chemistry center on Hubland (outskirts of Würzburg), where all the institutes of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy could be merged. Hünig headed the Institute for Organic Chemistry from the time the Chemical Institute was divided into the Institutes for Organic and Inorganic Chemistry until his retirement in 1988. He advocated the appointment of Max Schmidt to the board of directors of the inorganic institute.

Hünig played a key role in developing a tight curriculum for the chemistry students in Würzburg. This course of study served as a model for the nationwide reform of chemistry studies in mid-1990 . He was the doctoral supervisor of 140 chemists.

Visiting professorships in the USA, Brazil, Israel, South Africa and Hong Kong bear witness to Hünig's internationally recognized reputation.

Hünig is married and has six children.

Honors

In 1967 he received the Adolf von Baeyer medal from the Society of German Chemists . He received numerous other honors, such as an honorary doctorate from his previous places of work, the Universities of Marburg (1988) and Munich (1989), the University of Halle (1994) and finally the golden jubilee at his home university , the Technical University of Dresden , which made him a Dr.-Ing. PhD, his mentor was Wolfgang Langenbeck . In 1996 he was awarded the Heyrovský Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic . In 2011 the University of Würzburg awarded him the title of Honorary Senator . He has been a member of the Leopoldina since 1981 .

Scientific work

The scientific work of Siegfried Hünig is recorded in around 450 publications. His diverse research areas include

• Synthesis of dyes (preparation of cyanine and azo dyes by oxidative coupling of hydrazones),
• Investigations on the reactivity of methylene compounds in ionic and radical reactions,
• the chemistry of diimine,
• the cleavage of quaternary ammonium salts contrary to Hofmann's rule,
• the solvatochromy ,
• Investigations into the nucleophiles of carbenes ,
• the acylation of enamines ,
• Experiments on the reaction of ambident cations,
• Syntheses of squaric acid amidines,
• Work on biprotic acids with reversed pK relationships,
• Syntheses and reactions of triazenium salts,
• Syntheses via nucleophilic acylation,
• Copper salts of N , N ′ -dicyanchinondiiminone,
• two-stage reflex systems synthetic applications of trialkylsilyl cyanides,
• Investigations into rigid connections with parallel C = C and N = N bonds,
• as well as organic metals and
• Work on the protonation of carbanions .

Structural formula of diisopropylethylamine

Diisopropylethylamine is named after Siegfried Hünig as the Hünig base. It is a tertiary amine . Because of the steric shielding, only one proton is small enough to be attacked by the lone pair of electrons on the nitrogen atom. The Hünig base is therefore used as a selective base in alkylation reactions.

Web links

• Literature by and about Siegfried Hünig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Siegfried Hünig's homepage with information on the research areas
• Siegfried Hünig Lecture at the University of Würzburg
• Scientific CV, page 56f (June 2015, PDF; 1.3 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Written information from the Radebeul City Archives to users: Jbergner on November 8, 2010.
2. ^ Klaus Koschel: The development and differentiation of the subject chemistry at the University of Würzburg. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 703–749; here: p. 740 f.
3. ↑ Klaus Koschel and Gerhard Sauer, On the history of the Chemical Institute of the University of Würzburg, self-published 1968, p. 115.
4. ^ Chair II for Organic Chemistry Alfred Roedig .
5. ↑ Successor Chair I, Prof. Gerhard Bringmann ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .