Alfred Wohl
Alfred Wohl | |
|---|---|
Technical University of Danzig | |
| Doctoral advisor | August Wilhelm von Hofmann |
Alfred Wohl (3 October 1863 – 25 December 1939) was a German
Wohl–Ziegler reaction
.
Life
Wohl studied chemistry at the
Technical University of Danzig
in 1904. He retired because of antisemitic pressure in 1933, but worked in his lab until 1937. He emigrated to Sweden in 1938, where he died in 1939.
His son Kurt Wohl (1896–1962) – who also became a renowned chemical scientist – emigrated to Great Britain in 1939 and some years later to the United States.[1]
Work
His work in organic chemistry started with his PhD thesis on
hexamine in 1886. Under the influence of Fischer, Wohl focused on sugar chemistry. Wohl arbitrarily defined the structure of (+)-glyceraldehyde to have the D-configuration, forming the basis for the D-L system. This was done before chemists had the ability to prove (+)-glyceraldehyde was, in fact, D-glyceraldehyde. Before the invention of x-ray crystallography
the exact determination of the configuration at a chiral carbon atom was impossible.
| D-glyceraldehyde |
L-glyceraldehyde |
|
|
With this starting point, all related chiral compounds could be chemically transformed into (−)- or (+)-glyceraldehyde. By employing only chemical transformations with retention of stereochemical configuration, such an unknown chiral compound could be assigned either a D- or an L-configuration.
The use of
vanadium pentoxide for the catalytic oxidation with air of various substances became his most profitable invention. Similar catalysts are still used for the oxidation of naphthalene, anthraquinone and for the production of sulfuric acid from sulfur dioxide
.
References
- ^ Kurt Wohl – His Life and Work www.researchgate.net, January 2003
- Teresa Sokolowska, Romuald Piosik (2004). ".
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
