A skillful organic chemist, Otto Diels is known primarily for the Diels-Alder reaction, which he and his student Kurt Alder developed in 1928, and for which they received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1950. This reaction involves a synthesis between a molecule containing a double bond and a second molecule containing two adjacent double bonds. Diels' work in determining the structure of compounds led to the discovery of carbon suboxide, and helped other scientists determine the structure of cholesterol. As a professor, he was a masterful lecturer and produced a popular organic chemistry textbook.

Otto Paul Hermann Diels was born on January 23, 1876, in Hamburg, Germany, the second of three sons to Hermann Diels, a noted classical philologist and professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Bertha (née Dübell) Diels.

At age 13 or 14, Diels decided to become a chemist as a result of carrying...