World of Chemistry on Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer was a German organic chemist best known for synthesizing a wide variety of important compounds, including barbituric acid and indigo . Additionally, Baeyer also conducted research on phthalein dyes, concentrating his later research efforts to expanded knowledge of synthetic compounds and to develop a theory explaining the stability of five- and six-carbon rings. For his accomplishments in compound synthesis, Baeyer was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Baeyer was born in Berlin on October 31, 1835. His father, Johann Jacob Baeyer, was an officer in the Prussian army who also conducted geodetic surveys for the Prussian government, and his mother, Eugenie Hitzig, was the daughter of a prominent authority on criminal law and historian of literature. Baeyer developed an interest in science at an early age, and chemistry was the subject that intrigued him most. In his autobiography, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, he reports that he carried out his first chemical experiments at the age of nine and, three years later, discovered a previously unknown double carbonate of copper and sodium. At age thirteen, Baeyer performed his first experiments with indigo, the compound that later made him famous.
Baeyer attended the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin, where he assisted his science teacher with chemistry lectures. Upon his graduation in 1853, Baeyer entered the University of Berlin, intending to major in mathematics and physics. Two years later he left the university for a year of military service and then decided to continue his college education. By now Baeyer was committed to a program in chemistry and elected to attend the University of Heidelberg as Berlin had no chemistry laboratories. Heidelberg's chemistry department was headed by Robert Bunsen, a brilliant scholar responsible for developing such things as the electric cell and the Bunsen burner. Bunsen, however, had little interest in organic chemistry, the field that had become Baeyer's passion. As a result, Baeyer soon found himself gravitating toward the laboratories of Friedrich Kekulé , a German chemist known for his work on organic compounds. At this time Kekulé was a privatdozent at Heidelberg and one of the few organic chemists of the time. Although his collaboration with Kekulé was interesting and productive, Baeyer returned to Berlin in 1858 to complete his doctoral work on the compound known as cacodylic (arsenic methyl chloride).
After receiving his degree, Baeyer returned to work with Kekulé, who had by now accepted a call to the University of Ghent. Two years later, in 1860, Baeyer returned to Berlin and took a position at the Berlin Institute of Technology. Although his salary was very low, he had a large, relatively well-equipped laboratory in which to work and he remained at the institute for twelve years. It was during this time that he made most of his important discoveries, the first of which was developing a derivative of uric acid, in 1863. Barbituric acid is the parent compound of a group of drugs known as the barbiturates, which have a number of medical applications.
It was also at this time that Baeyer began his classic research on the dye indigo. For centuries the beautiful blue dye had been obtained from the plant of the same name, but its extraction was a costly process. By 1866 Baeyer had found a method for determining the approximate structural formula of indigo and then, four years later, first produced the compound synthetically in his laboratory. Baeyer continued to work on indigo for another two decades, finally announcing an even more precise formula for the compound in 1883.
Baeyer's years at the Berlin Institute of Technology were marked by a number of other important discoveries. In 1871, for example, he first reported on the structures of the dyes phenolphthalein and fluorescein. One of his students, Karl Graebe , determined the structure of another important dye, alizarin, by means of a technique outlined by Baeyer and after Baeyer had ordered him to do the experiment. In 1872 Baeyer was called to be professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, the first significant academic appointment in his career. His most notable accomplishment at Strasbourg was the development of methods for preparing condensation products from the reaction between phenol and formaldehyde. Three decades later, Leo Baekeland would adapt Baeyer's method in the synthesis of a phenol-formaldehyde resin known as bakelite , one of the world's first commercial plastics.
Baeyer reached the pinnacle of his career in 1875 when he was appointed professor of organic chemistry at the University of Munich. In the forty years he held this post, Baeyer wielded enormous influence on his profession, largely through the students he trained but also as a result of his continued research. His most important achievement during this period was the theory of strain that he developed to explain the structure of ring compounds. Extending Kekulé's work on the tetrahedral bonding of the carbon atom, Baeyer concluded that five- and six-membered rings are dynamically more stable than are rings with greater or lesser numbers of atoms, thus accounting for the much larger number of compounds of the former type.
Baeyer continued to perform most of his academic duties into his eightieth year. He then retired to his country house near Lake Starnberg, where he died on August 20, 1917. He had been married in 1868 to Lida Bendemann, and the couple had three children: Eugenie, Hans, and Otto. In addition to the 1905 Nobel Prize in chemistry, the honors accorded Baeyer included the Liebig Medal of the Congress of Berlin Chemists and the Davy Medal of the Royal Society. In 1885, King Ludwig II of Bavaria made Baeyer a member of the nobility, allowing him to add the honorific "von" to his name.
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