Ulrich Hofmann (chemist)
Ulrich Hofmann (born January 22, 1903 in Munich , † July 5, 1986 in Heidelberg ) was a German chemist.
Life
Hofmann, son of the chemist Karl Andreas Hofmann , studied chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin with a diploma in 1925 and obtained his doctorate in 1926 with his father with the thesis bright carbon and the series of black crystalline carbon .
In 1931 he completed his habilitation on graphitic acid and then worked as a lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin .
In 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP . In 1937 he became professor of chemistry and head of the chemical institute at Rostock University .
He only did a short military service in World War II, as he was released for military service.
In 1942 he became head of the Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the Technical University of Vienna , where he also installed an electron microscope (by Manfred von Ardenne ).
In 1945 he left Vienna and from 1948 taught chemistry at the Philosophical-Theological University of Regensburg , where no chemistry had previously been taught and he first had to set up his laboratory. In 1951 he went to the Eduard Zintl Institute of the TH Darmstadt . In 1960 he became head of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg . and retired in 1971.
plant
Hofmann was particularly concerned with the chemistry of clay minerals, as well as pigments and ancient ceramics. With Kurd Endell in the 1930s, he investigated the structure of clay minerals using, among other things, X-ray structure analysis. Among other things, they published in 1933 on the structure of the clay mineral montmorillonite . With Kurd Endell he also found the reason why German bentonites, in contrast to those from Wyoming in the USA, were not suitable for the construction industry - the cation between the silicate layers in American bentonite was sodium, and in German deposits calcium or magnesium. By adding sodium carbonate , however, German bentonite could also be used, which they applied for a patent in 1934/35. Hofmann also investigated with other clays (such as kaolin) how the properties (e.g. swelling behavior) change when water is absorbed with the cations between the silicate layers.
In continuation of the work of Peter Debye and Paul Scherrer , who analyzed the structure of graphite and diamond with X-rays, he examined, among other things, lustrous carbon and graphite oxide and he examined, for example, the absorption capacity and catalytic activity of graphites and graphite growth at high temperatures. This also brought him into contact with industry, for example with Siemens-Plania in Berlin before the Second World War. In 1941 he and Manfred von Ardenne examined soot particles using an electron microscope and found them made up of chains of spherical carbon structures.
Honors and memberships
In 1952 he became the first president of the German Society for Electron Microscopy. In 1955 he received the Alfred Stock Memorial Prize , in 1964 the Seger plaque , and in 1965 the Wolfgang Ostwald Prize . He was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1961) and the Leopoldina (1962). In 1968 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Munich .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Ulrich Hofmann at academictree.org, accessed on February 12 2018th
- ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 266.
- ^ History of the Faculty of Chemistry, Heidelberg
- ^ Ulrich Hofmann, Kurt Endell, Dietrich Willm, Crystal Structure and Swelling of Montmorillonite (The Clay Mineral of Betonnite) , Journal of Crystallography, Mineralogy and Petrography, Dept. A, Volume 86, 1933. P. 540.
- ^ List of the awards of the Seger plaque by the German Ceramic Society .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hofmann, Ulrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 22, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Munich |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th July 1986 |
| Place of death | Heidelberg |