Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe (27 September 1818 – 25 November 1884
[) was a major contributor to the birth of modern ]organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, ...
. He was a professor at Marburg
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approxima ...
and Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
. Kolbe was the first to apply the term synthesis in a chemical context, and contributed to the philosophical demise of vitalism
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Wher ...
through synthesis of the organic substance
In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. The s ...
acetic acid from carbon disulfide
Carbon disulfide (also spelled as carbon disulphide) is a neurotoxic, colorless, volatile liquid with the formula and structure . The compound is used frequently as a building block in organic chemistry as well as an industrial and chemical n ...
, 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
__NOTOC__
The Kolbe electrolysis or Kolbe reaction is an organic reaction named after Hermann Kolbe. The Kolbe reaction is formally a decarboxylative dimerisation of two carboxylic acids (or carboxylate ions). The overall reaction is:
:
If a ...
of carboxylate salts, the Kolbe-Schmitt reaction in the preparation of aspirin
Aspirin, also known as acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce pain, fever, and/or inflammation, and as an antithrombotic. Specific inflammatory conditions which aspirin is used to treat inc ...
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
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
'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 Markovnikov (russian: Марковников) is a Russian masculine surname, which originates from ''морковь'' (''carrot''); its feminine counterpart is Markovnikova. It may refer to
* Vladimir Markovnikov (1837–1904), Russian chemist
* Ni ...
, 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
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
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
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911.
General information
The ori ...
, Kingdom of Hanover
The Kingdom of Hanover (german: Königreich Hannover) was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, with the restoration of George III to his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic era. It succeeded the former Electorate of Ha ...
(Germany) as the eldest son of a Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
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
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
in the spring of 1838 in order to study with the famous chemist Friedrich Wöhler.
In 1842, he became an assistant to Robert Bunsen
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (;
30 March 1811
– 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...
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
Lyon Playfair, 1st Baron Playfair (1 May 1818 – 29 May 1898) was a British scientist and Liberal politician who was Postmaster-General from 1873 to 1874.
Early life
Playfair was born at Chunar, Bengal, the son of George Playfair (1782-1846 ...
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
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
. In 1864, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
in 1874.
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
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Wher ...
, 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 compound
In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. T ...
s 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
In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. Th ...
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 () 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, and contributed a number of new chemical reactions.
In particular, Kolbe developed procedures for the electrolysis of the salts of fatty and other carboxylic acids (Kolbe electrolysis
__NOTOC__
The Kolbe electrolysis or Kolbe reaction is an organic reaction named after Hermann Kolbe. The Kolbe reaction is formally a decarboxylative dimerisation of two carboxylic acids (or carboxylate ions). The overall reaction is:
:
If a ...
) and prepared salicylic acid, a building block of aspirin
Aspirin, also known as acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce pain, fever, and/or inflammation, and as an antithrombotic. Specific inflammatory conditions which aspirin is used to treat inc ...
in a process called Kolbe synthesis or Kolbe-Schmitt reaction. His method for the synthesis of nitriles is called the Kolbe nitrile synthesis, and with Edward Frankland he found that nitriles can be hydrolyzed to the corresponding acids.
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
Johann Peter Griess (6 September 1829 – 30 August 1888) was an industrial chemist and an early pioneer of organic chemistry. Griess was influential in the formation of modern dyes, first formulating the diazotization reaction of arylamines.
Li ...
, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Zaitsev (known for Zaitsev's rule
In organic chemistry, Zaitsev's rule (or Saytzeff's rule, Saytzev's rule) is an empirical rule for predicting the favored alkene product(s) in elimination reactions. While at the University of Kazan, Russian chemist Alexander Zaitsev studied a v ...
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
The Beckmann rearrangement, named after the German chemist Ernst Otto Beckmann (1853–1923), is a rearrangement of an oxime functional group to substituted amides. The rearrangement has also been successfully performed on haloimines and nitrone ...
), Carl Graebe (discoverer of alizarin
Alizarin (also known as 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone, Mordant Red 11, C.I. 58000, and Turkey Red) is an organic compound with formula that has been used throughout history as a prominent red dye, principally for dyeing textile fabrics. Historic ...
), Oscar Loew
Oscar Loew (2 April 1844 – 26 January 1941) was a German agricultural chemist, active in Germany, the United States, and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Biography
Loew was born in Marktredwitz, Bavaria, where his father was ...
, Constantin Fahlberg
Constantin Fahlberg (22 December 1850 in Tambov – 15 August 1910 in Nassau, aged 59) was a Russian chemist who discovered the sweet taste of anhydroorthosulphaminebenzoic acid in 1877–78 when analysing the chemical compounds in coal tar a ...
, Nikolai Menshutkin
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Menshutkin (russian: Николай Александрович Меншуткин; – ) was a Russian chemist who discovered the process of converting a tertiary amine to a quaternary ammonium salt via the reaction with a ...
, Vladimir Markovnikov
Vladimir Vasilyevich Markovnikov (russian: Влади́мир Васи́льевич Марко́вников), also spelled as Markownikoff ( – 11 February 1904), was a Russian chemist.
Early life and education
Markovnikov studied economics a ...
(first to describe carbocycles smaller and larger than cyclohexane, and known for Markovnikov's rule describing addition reactions to alkenes), Jacob Volhard
Jacob Volhard (4 June 1834 – 14 January 1910) was the German chemist who discovered, together with his student Hugo Erdmann, the Volhard–Erdmann cyclization reaction. He was also responsible for the improvement of the Hell–Volhard–Ze ...
, Ludwig Mond
Ludwig Mond FRS (7 March 1839 – 11 December 1909) was a German-born, British chemist and industrialist. He discovered an important, previously unknown, class of compounds called metal carbonyls.
Education and career
Ludwig Mond was born ...
, Alexander Crum Brown
Alexander Crum Brown FRSE FRS (26 March 1838 – 28 October 1922) was a Scottish organic chemist. Alexander Crum Brown Road in Edinburgh's King's Buildings complex is named after him.
Early life and education
Crum Brown was born at 4 Belle ...
(first to describe the double bond of ethylene), Maxwell Simpson, and Frederick Guthrie
Frederick Guthrie FRS FRSE (15 October 1833 – 21 October 1886) was a British physicist and chemist and academic author.
He was the son of Alexander Guthrie, a London tradesman, and the younger brother of mathematician Francis Guthrie. Al ...
.
Work as journal editor
Besides his work for periodical
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also example ...
s he wrote numerous books
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.
His rejection of structural chemistry, especially the theories of the structure of benzene by August Kekulé
Friedrich August Kekulé, later Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz ( , ; 7 September 1829 – 13 July 1896), was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, Kekulé was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially ...
, the theory of the asymmetric carbon atom by J.H. van't Hoff, and the reform of chemical nomenclature by Adolf von Baeyer
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer (; 31 October 1835 – 20 August 1917) was a German chemist who synthesised indigo and developed a nomenclature for cyclic compounds (that was subsequently extended and adopted as part of the IUPAC org ...
, 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...»''
The violence of his language worked to limit his posthumous reputation.
Publications
*
Sources
*
*
Notes and references
Further reading
* ''Kurzes Lehrbuch der Chemie . 1.Anorganische Chemie'' . Vieweg, Braunschweig 2. verb. Aufl. 188
Digital edition
by the University and State Library Düsseldorf
Wiley online library: ''Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis'', ultimate descendant of the ''Journal für Praktische Chemie''
accessed 2 July 2014.
* ''Journal für Praktische Chemie'', the article on the original German journal and its descendants, at the German Wikipedia, accessed 2 July 2014.
External links
*
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".
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kolbe, Hermann
19th-century German chemists
1818 births
1884 deaths
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Leipzig University faculty
University of Göttingen alumni
University of Marburg alumni
University of Marburg faculty
Scientists from Göttingen
People from the Kingdom of Hanover