Alexander Mitscherlich (28 May 1836 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

– 31 May 1918 in

Oberstdorf Oberstdorf ( Low Alemannic: ''Oberschdorf'') is a municipality and skiing and hiking town in Germany, located in the Allgäu region of the Bavarian Alps. It is the southernmost settlement in Germany and one of its highest towns. At the&nb ...

) was a German

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

and son of

Eilhard Mitscherlich Eilhard Mitscherlich (; 7 January 179428 August 1863) was a German chemist, who is perhaps best remembered today for his discovery of the phenomenon of crystallographic isomorphism in 1819. Early life and work Mitscherlich was born at Neuende ...

. He studied at

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 ...

, where he also became member of

Burschenschaft Hannovera Burschenschaft Hannovera is the oldest Burschenschaft, a traditional liberal German Student fraternity or student corporation (Studentenverbindung), incorporated in Göttingen in the Revolution year 1848 (May) at the Georg August University of ...

(fraternity). His most important work was in the field of processing wood to create

cellulose Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell wall ...

. He patented an early version of the

sulfite process The sulfite process produces wood pulp that is almost pure cellulose fibers by treating wood chips with solutions of sulfite and bisulfite ions. These chemicals cleave the bonds between the cellulose and lignin components of the lignocellulose. A ...

in 1882. In 1909 Mitscherlich wrote on crop yields in

agronomy Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and ...

. His results have been characterized as the "sum of two exponential processes." A historian of plant science wrote in 1942: :A working model of the soil: Liebig's Law of the Minimum was the formulation of an idea that yield of a crop was determined primarily by the amounts of plant food that were present in minimum quantities. His idea was discussed later as the Limiting Factor by BLACKMAN and again by MITSCHERLICH as the Law of Physiological Relations. The latter was expressed as a logarithmic function between yield and the quantity of pant food constituents, which is virtually the Law of Diminishing Returns.Howard S. Reed (1942) ''A Short History of the Plant Sciences'', page 247, Chronica Botanica Company

References

19th-century German chemists 1836 births 1918 deaths Burials at Frankfurt Main Cemetery Scientists from Berlin {{Germany-chemist-stub