Hermann Kolbe
Kolbe, c. 1860
Born
Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe

(1818-09-27)27 September 1818
Elliehausen, near Göttingen, Kingdom of Hanover
Died25 November 1884(1884-11-25) (aged 66)
Leipzig, German Empire
NationalityGerman
Alma materUniversity of Marburg
Known forKolbe electrolysis,
Kolbe–Schmitt reaction
Kolbe nitrile synthesis
AwardsDavy Medal (1884)
ForMemRS (1877)
Scientific career
FieldsChemist
InstitutionsUniversity of Marburg
University of Leipzig
Doctoral advisorRobert Bunsen
Friedrich Wöhler
Doctoral studentsPeter Griess
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Zaitsev
Theodor Curtius
Ernst Otto Beckmann
Carl Graebe
Oscar Loew
Constantin Fahlberg
Nikolai Menshutkin
Vladimir Markovnikov
Jacob Volhard
Ludwig Mond
Alexander Crum Brown
Maxwell Simpson
Frederick Guthrie [Note, not primary advisor for all in this list]

Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe (27 September 1818 – 25 November 1884[1]) 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.

Life

Kolbe was born in Elliehausen, near Göttingen, Kingdom of Hanover (Germany) as the eldest son of a Protestant pastor. At the age of 13, he entered the Göttingen Gymnasium, residing at the home of one of the professors. He obtained the leaving certificate (the Abitur) six years later. He had become passionate about the study of chemistry, matriculating at the University of Göttingen in the spring of 1838 in order to study with the famous chemist Friedrich Wöhler.[1]

In 1842, he became an assistant to Robert Bunsen at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. He took his doctoral degree in 1843 at the same university. A new opportunity arose in 1845, when he became assistant to Lyon Playfair at the new Museum of Economic Geology in London and a close friend of Edward Frankland. From 1847, he was engaged in editing the Handwörterbuch der reinen und angewandten Chemie (Dictionary of Pure and Applied Chemistry) edited by Justus von Liebig, Wöhler, and Johann Christian Poggendorff, and he also wrote an important textbook. In 1851, Kolbe succeeded Bunsen as professor of chemistry at Marburg and, in 1865, he was called to the Universität Leipzig. In 1864, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[2] He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1874.[3]

In 1853, he married Charlotte, the daughter of General-Major Wilhelm von Bardeleben. His wife died in 1876 after 23 years of happy marriage. They had four children.

Work in chemical research

As late as the 1840s, and despite Friedrich Wöhler's synthesis of urea in 1828, some chemists still believed in the doctrine of vitalism, according to which a special life-force was necessary to create "organic" (i.e., in its original meaning, biologically derived) compounds. Kolbe promoted the idea that organic compounds could be derived from substances clearly sourced from outside this "organic" context, directly or indirectly, by substitution processes. (Hence, while by modern definitions, he was converting one organic molecule to another, by the parlance of his era, he was converting "inorganic"—anorganisch—substances into "organic" ones only thought accessible through vital processes.) He validated his theory by converting carbon disulfide (CS2) to acetic acid (CH3COOH) in several steps (1843–45). Kolbe also introduced a modified idea of structural radicals, so contributing to the development of structural theory. A dramatic success came when his theoretical prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols was confirmed by the synthesis of the first of these classes of organic molecules. Kolbe was the first person to use the word synthesis in its present-day meaning,[4] and contributed a number of new chemical reactions.[1]

In particular, Kolbe developed procedures for the electrolysis of the salts of fatty and other carboxylic acids (Kolbe electrolysis)[5][6] and prepared salicylic acid, a building block of aspirin in a process called Kolbe synthesis or Kolbe-Schmitt reaction.[7][8] His method for the synthesis of nitriles is called the Kolbe nitrile synthesis,[9] and with Edward Frankland he found that nitriles can be hydrolyzed to the corresponding acids.[10] In addition to his own bench research and scholarly and editorial work, Kolbe oversaw student research at Leipzig and especially at Marburg; students spending time under his tutelage included Peter Griess, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Zaitsev (known for Zaitsev's rule predicting the product composition of elimination reactions), Theodor Curtius (discoverer of diazo compounds, hydrazines, and the Curtius rearrangement), Ernst Otto Beckmann (discoverer of the Beckmann rearrangement), Carl Graebe (discoverer of alizarin), Oscar Loew, Constantin Fahlberg, Nikolai Menshutkin, Vladimir Markovnikov (first to describe carbocycles smaller and larger than cyclohexane, and known for Markovnikov's rule describing addition reactions to alkenes), Jacob Volhard, Ludwig Mond, Alexander Crum Brown (first to describe the double bond of ethylene), Maxwell Simpson, and Frederick Guthrie.[11]

Work as journal editor

Besides his work for periodicals he wrote numerous books[12] Kolbe served for more than a decade as what, in modern terms, would be understood the senior editor of the Journal für Praktische Chemie (Journal of practical chemistry, from 1870 to 1884), Kolbe was sometimes so severely critical of the work of others, especially after about 1874, that some wondered whether he might have been suffering a mental illness. He was intolerant of what he regarded as loose speculation parading as theory, and sought through his writings to save his beloved science of chemistry from what he regarded as the scourge of modern structural theory.[1]

His rejection of structural chemistry, especially the theories of the structure of benzene by August Kekulé, the theory of the asymmetric carbon atom by J.H. van't Hoff, and the reform of chemical nomenclature by Adolf von Baeyer, was expressed in his vituperative articles in the Journal für Praktische Chemie. Some translated quotes illustrate his manner of articulating the deep conflict between his interpretation of chemistry and that of the structural chemists:

«...Baeyer is an excellent experimentor, but he is only an empiricist, lacking sense and capability, and his interpretations of his experiments show particular deficiency in his familiarity with the principles of true science...»[1][13]

The violence of his language worked to limit his posthumous reputation.[14]

Publications

  • Untersuchungen über die Elektrolyse organischer Verbindungen. Edinburgh: Livingstone. 1947.

Sources

Notes and references

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Alan J. Rocke. "Hermann Kolbe – German chemist". Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  2. ↑ Rocke, Alan J. (1993). The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry. Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-08110-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ↑ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  4. ↑ Kolbe wrote the word "synthesis" describing his project to transform carbon disulfide into acetic acid. See: Kolbe, H. (1845). "Beiträge zur Kenntniß der gepaarten Verbindungen" [Contributions to [our] knowledge of paired compounds]. Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie (in German). 54 (2): 145–188. doi:10.1002/jlac.18450540202. From pp. 145–146: "Im Gegensatz zu den bis jetzt bekannten gepaarten organischen Säuren, welche durch Zersetzung organischer Materien von meist complicierter Zusammensetzung unter Einwirkung kräftiger Agentien und unter Verhältnissen entstanden sind, welche eine mehrfache Auslegung der Zersetzungserscheinungen gestatten, werden diejenigen, welche den Gegenstand der nachstehenden Betrachtungen ausmachen, durch Synthese aus Körpern von möglichst einfacher Zusammensetzung gebildet, so daß sie uns über ihre Constitution kaum im Zweifel lassen, und können deshalb gewissermaßen als Prototypen jener Körperreihe angesehen werden." (In contrast to the paired organic acids known until now, which have been formed by the decomposition of organic matter of the most complicated composition during the reaction of strong agencies and under conditions that admit multiple interpretations of decomposition phenomena, those [compounds] that constitute the object of the following observations are formed by synthesis from substances of the simplest possible composition, so that they leave us hardly in doubt about their constitution, and thus can be viewed in a way as prototypes of those series of substances.)
  5. ↑ Hermann Kolbe (1849). "Untersuchungen über die Elektrolyse organischer Verbindungen". Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie. 69 (3): 257–372. doi:10.1002/jlac.18490690302.
  6. ↑ Lindsey, Alan; Jeskey, Harold (1957). "The Kolbe Schmitt Reaction". Chem Rev. 57 (4): 583–620. doi:10.1021/cr50016a001.
  7. ↑ Hermann Kolbe (1860). "Ueber Synthese der Salicylsäure". Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie. 113 (1): 125–127. doi:10.1002/jlac.18601130120.
  8. ↑ "Kolbe-Schmitt Reaction". Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  9. ↑ Electrochemical Dictionary
  10. ↑ "Kolbe Nitrile Synthesis". Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  11. ↑ "Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe – developer of Kolbe synthesis". 11 June 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  12. ↑ "Books by Hermann Kolbe". Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  13. ↑ Hermann Kolbe (1882). "Begründung meiner Urtheile über Ad. Baeyer's wissenschaftliche Qualification". Journal für Praktische Chemie. 26 (1): 308–323. doi:10.1002/prac.18820260121.
  14. ↑ "Today In Science History – September 27 – Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe". 27 September 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2016.

Further reading

  • Translations English Translation of Kolbe's seminal 1860 German article in Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie. English title: "On the syntheses of salicylic acid"; German title "Ueber Synthese der Salicylsäure".
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