Hermann Kolbe
Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe (27 September 1818 – 25 November 1884) was a major contributor to the birth of modern
organic chemistry. He was a professor at
Marburg and
Leipzig. Kolbe was the first to apply the term
synthesis in a chemical context, and contributed to the philosophical demise of
vitalism through synthesis of the
organic substance acetic acid from
carbon disulfide, and also contributed to the development of
structural theory. This was done via modifications to the idea of "radicals" and accurate prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols, and to the emerging array of organic reactions through his
Kolbe electrolysis of carboxylate salts, the
Kolbe-Schmitt reaction in the preparation of
aspirin and the
Kolbe nitrile synthesis. After studies with
Wöhler and
Bunsen, Kolbe was involved with the early internationalization of chemistry through work in London (with
Frankland). He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and won the
Royal Society of London's Davy Medal in the year of his death. Despite these accomplishments and his training important members of the next generation of chemists (including
Zaitsev,
Curtius,
Beckmann,
Graebe,
Markovnikov, and others), Kolbe is best remembered for editing the
''Journal für Praktische Chemie'' for more than a decade, in which his vituperative essays on
Kekulé's structure of benzene,
van't Hoff's theory on the origin of
chirality and
Baeyer's reforms of nomenclature were personally critical and linguistically violent. Kolbe died of a heart attack in
Leipzig at age 66, six years after the death of his wife, Charlotte. He was survived by four children.
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