AKA Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer

Born: 31-Oct-1835
Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
Died: 20-Aug-1917
Location of death: Starnberg, Germany
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Chemist

Nationality: Germany
Executive summary: Synthesized indigo

German chemist, born at Berlin on the 31st of October 1835, his father being Johann Jacob von Baeyer (1794-1885), chief of the Berlin Geodetical Institute from 1870. He studied chemistry under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Friedrich August Kekulé, and in 1858 took his degree as Ph.D. at Berlin, becoming privatdozent a few years afterwards and assistant professor in 1866. Five years later he was appointed professor of chemistry at Strassburg, and in 1875 he migrated in the same capacity to Munich. He devoted himself mainly to investigations in organic chemistry, and in particular to synthetical studies by the aid of "condensation" reactions.

The Royal Society of London awarded him the Davy medal in 1881 for his researches on indigo, the nature and composition of which he did more to elucidate than any other single chemist, and which he also succeeded in preparing artificially, though his methods were not found commercially practicable, and he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for this in 1905. To celebrate his seventieth birthday his scientific papers were collected and published in two volumes (Gesammelte Werke, Brunswick, 1905), and the names of the headings under which they are grouped give some idea of the range and extent of his chemical work: (1) organic arsenic compounds, (2) uric acid group, (3) indigo, (4) papers arising from indigo researches, (5) pyrrol and pyridine bases, (6) experiments on the elimination of water and on condensation, (7) the phthaleins, (8) the hydro-aromatic compounds, (9) the terpenes, (10) nitroso compounds, (11) furfurol, (12) acetylene compounds and "strain" (Spannung) theory, (13) peroxides, (14) basic properties of oxygen, (13) dibenzalacetone and triphenylamine, (16) various researches on the aromatic and (17) the aliphatic series. He died 1917 in Starnberg, near Munich.

Father: Johann Jacob von Baeyer (b. 1794, d. 1885)
Mother: Eugenie Hitzig
Wife: Adelheid Bendemann (m. 1868, one daughter, two sons)
Daughter: (m. Oskar Piloty)
Son: Hans (professor of medicine)
Son: Otto (professor of physics)

    University: PhD, University of Berlin (1858)
    Teacher: Privatdozent, University of Berlin (1860-66)
    Professor: University of Berlin (1866-)
    Professor: Gewerbe-Akademie, Berlin
    Professor: University of Strassburg (1871-75)
    Professor: University of Munich (1875-1917)

    Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1905
    Davy Medal 1881

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