Wolf Johannes Müller

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Wolf Johannes Müller (born July 8, 1874 in Olten (uncertain); † December 9, 1941 in Vienna ) was a Swiss chemist ( physical chemistry , organic chemistry ).

Müller was a son of the engineer Karl Müller and a grandson of the physicist and mathematician Johann Heinrich Jacob Müller . He grew up in Freiburg im Breisgau and studied chemistry, physics and mathematics at the Universities of Strasbourg and Freiburg im Breisgau , where he received his doctorate in 1897 ( on some new derivatives of o-methylquinoline ). He then worked with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff in Berlin and Leipzig and, from 1898, assistant to Johann Wilhelm Hittorf at the University of Münster . It was there that he first came into contact with his research topic, the passivation of metals. He was with Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm and from 1900 back in Freiburg, where he dealt with organic chemistry in Ludwig Gattermann's laboratory and completed his habilitation in 1900. Then he was a teacher at the municipal chemistry school in Mulhouse and from 1906 private lecturer and from 1909 professor at the University of Basel . From 1911 he headed the laboratory for inorganic chemistry at Bayer in Leverkusen. In 1926 he became a professor at the Vienna University of Technology , succeeding Hans Jüptner von Jonstorff . At first he held the chair for inorganic chemical engineering and later also for fuel chemistry.

At Bayer he developed a process for producing sulfuric acid from gypsum , with cement as a by- product. Gypsum (which was obtained at Bayer during phenol production) was converted with clay and coal at 1200 degrees Celsius. It gained importance after further development by Kühne (Müller-Kühne process).

He is particularly known for research into the passivation of metals. The natural formation of a thin protective layer against corrosion has been known for some base metals for a long time and the first explanations came from Michael Faraday . Based on electrochemical investigations, Müller developed a covering theory to explain the phenomenon.

In 1936 he became a corresponding member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

  • The covering theory of the passivity of metals and their experimental justification. Verlag Chemie, Berlin 1933.
  • with Ernst Graf: Short textbook of the technology of fuels. Deuticke, Vienna 1939.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Müller, Wolf Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss chemist
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Olten
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1941
Place of death Vienna