- Person
- Richard Willstätter
- Lived
- 1872–1942
- Field
- Organic chemistry
- From
- German
The story
Richard Willstätter entered the University of Munich in 1890, at the age of 18, and came under the influence of Adolf von Baeyer, the leading organic chemist in Germany, who took a close interest in his career. Willstätter never worked directly for Baeyer, but he thought of himself as Baeyer's disciple. In 1893 he began his doctoral research under Alfred Einhorn on the chemistry of cocaine, a plant alkaloid, and he completed his doctorate in 1894.
During that work Willstätter came to suspect that the structure assigned to cocaine, which Einhorn himself had proposed in 1893, was wrong. When Willstätter began independent research, Einhorn forbade him to work on the cocaine problem. With Baeyer's approval, he chose instead to study the closely related compound tropine. Its structure was thought to be similar to that of cocaine, so once tropine was understood, the structure of cocaine could be easily worked out.
Through a series of careful breakdown and synthesis experiments between 1894 and 1898, Willstätter showed that the earlier formulas were incorrect and that these alkaloids belong to a family of compounds built on two linked rings, including a ring of seven atoms. Einhorn was offended and refused to speak to him for the rest of his time in Munich. Willstätter's 1896 habilitation thesis dealt with the tropine group, and in 1897 he applied for a United States patent for tropine ketones and a process for making them. In 1918 he described an elegant synthesis of ecgonine, another member of the family.
The work extended to atropine, another alkaloid from the same family, which is still used in medicine today, for example to treat a slow heart rate and to widen the pupils for eye examinations. His studies of the tropine alkaloids also led him to make cyclooctatetraene, a molecule that became a classic test of chemical theory.
The episode showed the independence of mind that marked Willstätter's whole career. A young doctoral student willing to challenge his own supervisor's formula went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1915, and his early training in alkaloid chemistry prepared him for his great work on the pigments of plants.
Why it matters
Understanding the structures of cocaine and atropine helped chemists design safer local anaesthetics and other medicines based on these molecules.
About Richard Willstätter
Nobel-winning chemist who unravelled chlorophyll and the colours of flowers, refused to convert, resigned his chair in protest at antisemitism and died a refugee in Switzerland.
More about Richard Willstätter
- Richard Willstätter helped explain why carrots are orangeWhile purifying chlorophyll, Richard Willstätter found yellow by-products that turned out to be carotenoids, beginning the scientific study of the pigments in carrots, tomatoes and egg yolks.
- Richard Willstätter decoded the colours of flowersRichard Willstätter discovered that most red, purple and blue flowers owe their colour to three related pigments, and that acidity or alkalinity in the sap helps decide the shade.
- Richard Willstätter discovered chlorophyll a and bAfter studying chlorophyll from more than 200 kinds of plants, Richard Willstätter showed it is always a mix of two pigments, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, in a ratio of about three to one.
- Richard Willstätter made a molecule that tested a theoryRichard Willstätter synthesised cyclooctatetraene, a ring of eight carbon atoms, and showed it does not behave like benzene, an important test of ideas about chemical stability.
- Richard Willstätter treated enzymes as chemicalsIn the 1920s Richard Willstätter developed methods to purify enzymes and helped establish that they are chemical substances that can be studied with the tools of chemistry.
- Richard Willstätter built a gas mask filter in five weeksRefusing to work on poison gas, Richard Willstätter instead designed a protective gas mask filter in about five weeks in 1915, shielding soldiers from chlorine and phosgene.
- Richard Willstätter found magnesium at chlorophyll's heartRichard Willstätter showed that magnesium is an essential part of chlorophyll, the green pigment plants use to capture sunlight, work that won him the 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- Richard Willstätter resigned to protest antisemitismIn 1924 Richard Willstätter gave up one of Germany's most prestigious chairs of chemistry in protest after his Munich colleagues refused to appoint a scientist because he was Jewish.
Sources
- Richard Willstätter Encyclopedia.com
- Richard Willstätter, Great Inventors German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA)
- Richard Willstätter: Biographical NobelPrize.org
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.