Wilhelm Klemm (chemist)

Wilhelm Karl Klemm (born January 5, 1896 in Guhrau , Lower Silesia , †  October 24, 1985 in Danzig ) was a German chemist and influential science manager.

Life

From 1919 to 1923, Klemm studied chemistry at the University of Breslau . There he did his doctorate with Heinrich Biltz . His supervisor he followed to the Technical University of Hanover , where he was in the field of inorganic chemistry in 1927 habilitated and in 1929 extraordinary professor was appointed. In 1933 he accepted a position at the Technical University of Danzig , whose department for inorganic chemistry he headed until 1945. In 1944/45 he was Vice Rector of the university and directed its evacuation from Gdansk.

In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . After his denazification - he was a member of the NSDAP and supporting member of the SS - he initially worked in Kiel from 1947 and taught from 1951 until his retirement in Münster , where he headed the Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry until 1965. Klemm died in Gdansk on October 24, 1985. His grave is in the central cemetery in Münster .

Scientific work

In the 1920s, Klemm made a name for himself with work on magnetochemistry . Throughout his entire scientific career he has dealt with topics of inorganic and physical chemistry . He refined Eduard Zintl's ideas about the structure of intermetallic compounds (“Zintl-Klemm concept”). In 1962, at the same time as an American working group headed by Rudolf Hoppe, the first noble gas compounds were produced in the institute at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, which he directed . His textbooks on inorganic chemistry (including the so-called "small Klemm" in the Göschen collection) and - as a successor to his doctoral supervisor - on the experimental introduction to inorganic chemistry (the "Biltz-Klemm-Fischer", or BKF for short) were in his day Standard books for every chemistry student and achieved a number of editions.

In 1965 he and Harald Schäfer founded the shirt sleeve colloquium (HÄKO) for solid-state chemistry in Münster, which has been held annually in different locations since then.

Offices and dignities

Wilhelm Klemm not only achieved merits in the scientific field, but was above all an influential science organizer. He was President of the Society of German Chemists , Rector of the University of Münster and a member of various committees of the DFG . From 1965 to 1967 he was President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and thus the first German scientist to hold such a high international office after the war.

Klemm was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina as well as the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , the Bavarian and North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts . He has received several honorary doctorates and numerous prizes. In 1951 he received the Liebig medal from the Society of German Chemists . In 1966 the Federal President awarded him the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Klemm was co-editor of the magazine for inorganic and general chemistry as well as the chemical central sheet .

Scientific exchange

Wilhelm Klemm was committed to international exchange in the sciences throughout his life. Until the end of the 1960s, he tried to keep scientists in the GDR and the Federal Republic going together. As President of the Society of German Chemists, he took part in the founding event of the Chemical Society of the GDR . The Chemische Zentralblatt, which he published, remained "all-German" until 1969. As President of the IUPAC, he campaigned - after initial reluctance - for the GDR to join the international chemists' union.

He also sought a balance with Poland. He remained connected to his former university in Gdansk even during the Cold War. An official visit was not made until October 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the re-establishment of the now Polish university. Klemm received an award there. He is said to have said, deeply moved, that he would rather stay in Gdansk than return to Germany. A few days later, shortly before the planned return trip, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack.

Others

• The Society of German Chemists awards the Wilhelm Klemm Prize .
• In Münster the street on which u. a. the lecture hall of the chemistry department is located, named after Wilhelm Klemm.

literature

• Deichmann, Ute : Escape, join in, forget. Chemists and biochemists during the Nazi era. Weinheim 2001.
• Goubeau, Josef: Wilhelm Klemm. In: Journal of Electrochemistry. Reports of the Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry. 65, pp. 105-106 (1961).
• Hoppe, Rudolf: In Memoriam Wilhelm Klemm (1896–1985) - Nestor of Inorganic Solid State Chemistry. In: Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry. 622 (1996), pp. 1-8.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Klemm in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Confession, p. 132

predecessor	Office	successor
Jost Trier	Rector of the University of Münster 1957–1958	Wilhelm Rudolph