Ernst Otto Fischer | Biography

Ernst Otto Fischer was born on November 10, 1918, in the Munich suburb of Solln. The third child of Valentine Danzer Fischer and Karl Tobias Fischer, a physics professor at Munich's Technische Hochschule, Fischer attended the Theresien Gymnasium (high school), graduating in 1937. Following this, Fischer spent two years compulsory service in the German army, a stint which was extended with the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In between serving in Poland, France, and Russia, Fischer was able, in the winter of 1941-42, to begin his studies in chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Munich. Captured by the Americans, he was held in a prisoner of war camp until repatriation in the fall of 1945. He renewed his chemistry studies in Munich in 1946. Fischer earned his Ph.D. degree in 1952 for research on carbon-to-nickel bonds.

While working as an assistant researcher at the Technische Hochschule, Fischer and his first research students were drawn to a puzzling compound reported by the chemists T. Kealy and P. Pauson. In an attempt to link two cyclopentadiene--five-carbon--rings together, these scientists discovered an unknown compound which they believed involved an iron atom linked between two consecutive longitudinal rings of carbon. The intervening iron atom seemed to join with a carbon atom on each of the rings. That such metal-to-carbon bonds exist was not the surprising thing. In fact, such unstable bonds are necessary for catalytic processing of such compounds. What was interesting about this compound (initially called dicyclopentadienyl iron) was that it was not unstable at all. It was in fact highly stable both thermally and chemically. Such stability made no sense to Fischer given the nature of the proposed structure of the compound, and he theorized that it was in fact an entirely new sort of molecular complex. An English chemist, Geoffrey Wilkinson, soon proposed an alternate structure to the compound (now renamed ferrocene): He described ferrocene as made up of an atom of iron sandwiched between two parallel rings, one on top of the other rather than in a line on the same plane. Thus the iron formed bonds not just with a single atom on each ring, but with all of the atoms and also with the electrons within the rings, accounting for its stability. From this description came the term "sandwich compounds." Meanwhile, Fischer and his research team, including W. Pfab, carried out meticulous x-ray crystallography on ferrocene, elucidating the compound's structure, and proving Wilkinson's theory correct. The examination and discovery of the structure of ferrocene was a watershed event in the field of organometallic chemistry, spawning a new generation of inorganic chemists.

From ferrocene, Fischer and his team went on to determine the structure of, as well as synthesize, other transition metals--those substances at a stage in between metal and organic--especially dibenzenechromium, an aromatic hydrocarbon. Such substances are termed aromatic not because of smell, but because of structure: They are hydrocarbons in closed rings which are capable of uniting with other atom groups. Fischer showed dibenzenechromium to be another sandwich compound with two rings of benzene joined by an atom of chromium in between. This bit of research earned him world-wide renown in scientific circles, as the neutral chromium molecule and neutral benzene molecules had been thought to be uncombinable. Fischer's rise in academia parallelled the swift advance of his research: by 1954 he was an assistant professor at the Technische Hochschule; by 1957, a full professor at the University of Munich; and in 1964 he came back to the Technische Hochschule--by now called the Technische Universität or Technical University--as director of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry. Fischer's laboratory soon became a center for worldwide organometallic research, and Fischer soon became the leading spokesperson for the new study. He also began lecturing around the world, and spent two visiting professorships in the United States in 1971 and 1973.

In 1973 Fischer was awarded the Nobel Prize, sharing it with the English Wilkinson for their "pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so-called sandwich compounds." At about this same time, Fischer and his team at Munich's Technical University were successfully synthesizing both the first carbene complexes and carbyne complexes--carbon atoms triply joined to metal atoms--that heralded an entirely new class of metal complexes of a transitional sort and spurred research in the field.

In addition to the Nobel, Fischer has also won the Göttingen Academy Prize in 1957 and the Alfred Stock Memorial Prize of the Society of German Chemists in 1959, as well as honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and full membership in the German Academy of Scientists. Among the many commercial and industrial spin-offs of his work is the creation of catalysts employed in the drug industry and also in oil refining, leading to the manufacture of fuels with low lead content. Fischer, in his 80s, earned emeritus status at the Technical University of Munich in 1984. He is an emeritus scholar there.