Otto Ruff
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Otto Ruff (12 December 1871 – 17 September 1939) 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 ...
.


Life

Otto Ruff was born in
Schwäbisch Hall Schwäbisch Hall (; "Swabian Hall"; from 1802 until 1934 and colloquially: ''Hall'' ) is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg located in the valley of the Kocher river, the longest tributary (together with its headwater Lein) of the ...
,
Württemberg Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart. Together with Baden and Hohenzollern, two other historical territories, Würt ...
. After becoming a
pharmacist A pharmacist, also known as a chemist (Commonwealth English) or a druggist (North American and, archaically, Commonwealth English), is a healthcare professional who prepares, controls and distributes medicines and provides advice and instructi ...
under the supervision of
Carl Magnus von Hell Carl Magnus von Hell (8 September 1849 – 11 December 1926) was the German chemist who discovered, together with Jacob Volhard and the Russian chemist Nikolay Zelinsky, the Hell–Volhard–Zelinsky halogenation reaction. Life He studied chemist ...
(known from the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation) at the
University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wit ...
he joined the group of
Hermann Emil Fischer Hermann Emil Louis Fischer (; 9 October 1852 – 15 July 1919) was a German chemist and 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He also developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of dra ...
at the
University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
. Fischer was noted for his work on
carbohydrates In organic chemistry, a carbohydrate () is a biomolecule consisting of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water) and thus with the empirical formula (where ''m'' may or may ...
(sugars) and so Ruff started his career as an organic chemist. In 1898 he published his work on the transformation of d-Glucose to d-Arabinose, later called the Ruff degradation. Supported by the far-sighted Fischer, who recognized that while organic chemistry was now mature, physical chemistry was growing rapidly, Ruff became head of the new inorganic department in Berlin, working alongside
Alfred Stock Alfred Stock (July 16, 1876 – August 12, 1946) was a German inorganic chemist. He did pioneering research on the hydrides of boron and silicon, coordination chemistry, mercury, and mercury poisoning. The German Chemical Society's Alfred-Stoc ...
who was five years his junior. This drastic change in subject benefited Ruff during his work on chlorides sulfur compounds. In 1902 he married Meta Richter, a pharmacist, and from this marriage he had three children. In 1904 he became a professor at the
Technical University of Danzig Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...
and from 1916 onward he was head of the inorganic chemistry department at the
Technical University of Breslau Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...
. He died three years after his retirement in 1939. His last years of teaching were made miserable by a privatdozent and assistant, Helmut Hartmann, who had joined the Nazi party and became an "insolent politician" who made life unbearable for many.


Scientific achievements

Otto Ruff published 290 papers and two books. The books were: "The Chemistry of Fluorine" (published in 1920 by Springer Verlag, Berlin) and "Introduction to Chemical Practicum" (Leipzig 1926, 2nd edition 1937). His papers can be categorized as follows: chemistry of sugars (17 papers), inorganic chemistry of fluorine (86), high temperature chemistry (44), electrolysis of molten salts (9), plastics (10), carbides (20), explosions in mines (7), other fields of inorganic chemistry (72). Website of the Technical University of Gdansk, http://www.kchn.pg.gda.pl/?p=history&lng=en Along with
Svante Arrhenius Svante August Arrhenius ( , ; 19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a Swedes, Swedish scientist. Originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. He received ...
,
Henri Moissan Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan (28 September 1852 – 20 February 1907) was a French chemist and pharmacist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds. Moissan was one of the original mem ...
, and
Alfred Werner Alfred Werner (12 December 1866 – 15 November 1919) was a Swiss chemist who was a student at ETH Zurich and a professor at the University of Zurich. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for proposing the octahedral configuration of ...
, all of whom received Nobel Prizes, O. Ruff was regarded as the driver of the achievements of inorganic chemistry in first decades of the 20th century.


See also

* Ruff degradation


References

New link to Website of the Gdansk University of Technology (previously Technical University of Gdańsk): https://chem.pg.edu.pl/kchn/otto-ruff-en


Literature

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ruff, Otto 1871 births 1939 deaths People from Schwäbisch Hall 20th-century German chemists Academic staff of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology