Werner Emmanuel Bachmann

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Werner Emmanuel Bachmann (born November 13, 1901 in Detroit , Michigan , † March 22, 1951 ) was an American chemist .

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As the son of a Swiss immigrant, Bachmann attended Western Technical High School in Detroit . After two years at Detroit Junior College , he studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan . In 1923 he received a Bachelor of Science degree . One of his professors at Ann Arbor was Moses Gomberg . In 1924 he got the Master of Science . In the same year he and Gomberg developed a radical substitution that leads to biphenyls in aromatics , the Gomberg-Bachmann reaction .

Bachmann worked for the Allied Chemical & Dye Company (now Honeywell International ) for a short time . In 1926 he was awarded a Ph.D. PhD . A year later, Bachmann married Marie Knaphurst from Chicago , with whom he had two children (Joan Marie and Roger Werner). In 1928 he went to Zurich and worked with Paul Karrer on the chemistry of lycopene . In 1929 he went back to Michigan and became an assistant professor there . In 1931 he was appointed to the University of Illinois in the same capacity . In 1933 he received the Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan. Bachmann was promoted to associate professor in 1935. In the same year he went to Europe and worked with James Wilfred Cook at the Royal Cancer Hospital in London and with Heinrich Otto Wieland in Munich . A year later he went back to Michigan, where he was appointed professor of chemistry in 1939 . In 1941 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences . During the Second World War he worked on an improved synthesis for the high-explosive explosive hexogen (RDX), which is now known as the Bachmann process . For his work on the synthesis he received the Naval Ordnance Award in 1945 and the Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1948 , as well as the King's Medal from the British government .

In 1939 he carried out the first total synthesis of a steroid hormone , equilenin (horse estrogen ).

Bachmann was editor of the journals Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), Journal of Organic Chemistry , Organic Reactions and Organic Syntheses . He himself was the author or co-author of over 150 publications.

Bachmann died of heart failure on March 22, 1951.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Werner E. Bachmann at academictree.org, accessed on January 6, 2018.
  2. ^ WE Bachmann, W. Cole, AL Wilds, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 61, 1939, p. 674, Vol. 62, 1940, p. 824