Richard Willstätter

Prof Richard Martin Willstätter FRS(For) HFRSE[2] (13 August 1872 – 3 August 1942) was a German organic chemist whose study of the structure of plant pigments, chlorophyll included, won him the 1915 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Willstätter invented paper chromatography independently of Mikhail Tsvet.[3][4]

Richard Willstätter
Born	Richard Martin Willstätter 13 August 1872 Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany
Died	3 August 1942(1942-08-03) (aged 69) Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland
Nationality	Germany
Alma mater	University of Munich
Known for	Organic chemistry
Spouse(s)	Sophie Leser (1903-1908; her death; 2 children)[1]
Awards	Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1915) Faraday Lectureship Prize (1927) Davy Medal (1932) Willard Gibbs Award (1933) Fellow of the Royal Society[2]
Scientific career
Fields	Physical chemistry
Institutions	University of Munich ETH Zürich University of Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
Doctoral advisor	Alfred Einhorn, Adolf von Baeyer

Life

Willstätter was born into a Jewish family in Karlsruhe.[5] He was the son of Maxwell (Max) Willstätter, a textile merchant, and his wife, Sophie Ulmann.

He went to school at the Karlsruhe Gymnasium and, when his family moved to Nuremberg, he attended the Technical School there. At age 18 he entered the University of Munich to study science and stayed for the next fifteen years. He was in the Department of Chemistry, first as a student of Alfred Einhorn—he received his doctorate in 1894 - then as a faculty member. His doctoral thesis was on the structure of cocaine. Willstätter continued his research into other alkaloids and synthesized several of them. In 1896 he was named Lecturer and in 1902 Professor extraordinarius (professor without a chair).

In 1905 he left Munich to become professor at the ETH Zürich and there he worked on the plant pigment chlorophyll. He first determined its empirical formula.

In 1912 he became professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, studying the structure of pigments of flowers and fruits. It was here that Willstätter showed that chlorophyll was a mixture of two compounds, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b.[6] He lived in the Dahlem neighborhood near other scientists.

In 1915 his friend Fritz Haber asked him to join in the development of poison gasses.[7] Willstätter would not work on poisons but agreed to work on protection. He and his coworkers developed a three layer filter that absorbed all of the enemy's gasses. Thirty million were manufactured by 1917 and Willstätter was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class.[8]

In 1916 he returned to Munich as the successor to his mentor Baeyer. During the 1920s Willstätter investigated the mechanisms of enzyme reactions and did much to establish that enzymes are chemical substances, not biological organisms.

In 1924 Willstätter's career came to "a tragic end when, as a gesture against increasing antisemitism, he announced his retirement."[1] According to his Nobel biography:[9] "Expressions of confidence by the Faculty, by his students and by the Minister failed to shake the fifty-three year old scientist in his decision to resign. He lived on in retirement in Munich....Dazzling offers both at home and abroad were alike rejected by him."[1] His only research was with assistants who telephoned their results. Despite pleas for him to move to Jerusalem or to Switzerland earlier in the 1930s, Willstätter did not flee from Germany until 1939.

In 1939 Willstätter emigrated to Switzerland. He spent the last three years of his life there in Muralto near Locarno writing his autobiography. He died of a heart attack in 1942.

Willstätter's autobiography, Aus meinem Leben, was not published in German until 1949. It was translated into English as From My Life in 1965.[10]

Anecdote

In 1911 the fledgling American chemist Michael Heidelberger went to work for a year with Willstätter in Zurich. Willstätter helped his somewhat impecunious American student by sharing the cost of laboratory supplies with him, arranging that when expensive materials, such as silver nitrate, were to be bought, it was his turn to pay, while Heidelberger took turns buying cheaper materials like sulfuric acid. "Better training than that you couldn't have," Heidelberger summed up his experience with Willstätter. They remained friends for life.

Family

In 1903, he married Sophie Leser, who died in 1908.[11] They had two children.

Honours

In 1965, the school in Nuremberg he had attended named itself Willstätter-Gymnasium, in his honour.[12]

See also

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

1. From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966 (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1915/willstatter/biographical/)
2. Robinson, R. (1953). "Richard Willstätter. 1872-1942". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 8 (22): 609–626. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1953.0021. JSTOR 769233.
3. Allen, W. A.; Gausman, H. W.; Richardson, A. J. (1973). "Willstätter-Stoll Theory of Leaf Reflectance Evaluated by Ray Tracing". Applied Optics. 12 (10): 2448–2453. Bibcode:1973ApOpt..12.2448A. doi:10.1364/AO.12.002448. PMID 20125799.
4. Dées De Sterio, A. (1967). "Richard Willstätter, 25th anniversary of his death (25 September 1942)". Munchener medizinische Wochenschrift (1950). 109 (39): 2018–2019. PMID 4874034.
5. Stoltzenberg, Dietrich (2004). Fritz Haber: chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Chemical Heritage Foundation. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-941901-24-6.
6. Motilva, Maria-José (2008), "Chlorophylls - from functionality in food to health relevance", 5th Pigments in Food congress- for quality and health, University of Helsinki, ISBN 978-952-10-4846-3
7. L.F.Haber (1986). The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War, Clarendon Press
8. Van der Kloot, W. (2004). April 1915: Five future Nobel prize-winners inaugurate weapons of mass destruction and the academic-industrial-military complex. Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 58: 149-160, 2004/
9. Richard Willstätter - Biography at nobelprize.org
10. Richard Willstätter: Aus meinem Leben, edited by A. Stoll, Verlag Chemie, Weinheim, 1949; English edition: From My Life, Benjamin, New York, 1965.
11. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 978-0-902198-84-5.
12. School Homepage (in German) The Meaning of our School's Name – Richard Willstätter and his Legacy, accessed 3 May 2020

External links

• Richard Willstätter on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, June 3, 1920 On Plant Pigments
• Mahnmale, Gedenkstätten, Erinnerungsorte für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in München 1933-1945 pages 158-166
• Newspaper clippings about Richard Willstätter in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW