Julius Bernhard Friedrich Adolph Wilbrand (22 August 1839 – 22 June 1906)''Familienarchiv Familie Wilbrand'' O13, Nr. 139, Hessisches Landesmuseum

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

. 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 ...

. Born in

Gießen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...

to Franz Joseph Julius Wilbrand and Albertine Knapp, he discovered

trinitrotoluene Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reage ...

in 1863,G. Carlton Smith: ''TNT. Trinitrotoluenes and Mono- and Dinitrotoluenes, Their Manufacture and Properties'', New York 1918, S. 17-18. but the compound's use as an explosive was not developed until later. Wilbrand obtained trinitrotoluene or TNT by the

nitration In organic chemistry, nitration is a general class of chemical processes for the introduction of a nitro group into an organic compound. The term also is applied incorrectly to the different process of forming nitrate esters between alcohols an ...

toluene Toluene (), also known as toluol (), is a substituted aromatic hydrocarbon. It is a colorless, water-insoluble liquid with the smell associated with paint thinners. It is a mono-substituted benzene derivative, consisting of a methyl group (CH3) a ...

References

1839 births 1906 deaths 19th-century German chemists People from Giessen University of Giessen alumni {{Germany-chemist-stub