Charles Adolphe Wurtz

Charles Adolphe Wurtz, Karl Adolph Wurtz ( * November 26, 1817 in Strasbourg, † May 12, 1884 in Paris ) was a French physician and chemist. His main study area were the chemistry of hydrocarbons and organic nitrogen compounds. He synthesized the ethylamine and discovered the glycol and the phosphorus oxychloride. Along with Rudolph Fittig was named the Wurtz synthesis, in which arise from haloalkanes by the action of alkali metals hydrocarbons.

Life

His father Jean Jacques Wurtz was a Protestant pastor in Strasbourg and Wolfi home where Charles Adolphe Wurtz spent his early youth. His mother was Sophie Kreiss. After visiting the evangelical school in Strasbourg in 1834, he began, in agreement with his father to study medicine. He was interested particularly in clinical chemistry, so he was appointed chief of the travaux chimiques at the Strasbourg School of Medicine in 1839. He finished his studies with a dissertation Histoire Chimique de la bile à l' état ​​sain et à l' état ​​pathologique (1839 ). Then, a year of study under Justus von Liebig in Giessen followed, following which he went back to Paris, where he worked in the laboratory of Jean -Baptiste Dumas. In 1845 he became assistant ( taxidermist ) of Dumas at the École de Médicine de Paris, and four years later he started there lectures on organic chemistry to keep.

Another academic publication Faculté de Médecine of Paris appeared in 1847 with the title De la production de la chaleur dans les êtres organisés. Because of the modest facilities of his laboratory at the École de Médicine de Paris, he opened his own private laboratory in 1850 in the Rue Garenciere. He stood with the Alsatian chemists Auguste Scheurer -Kestner, Charles Frédéric Gerhardt and Joseph- Achille Le Bel in conjunction.

Wurtz married Constance Opperman (1830-1906) both had a daughter, Sophie, Lucie Wurtz (1855-1922) and a son Henri Wurtz ( 1862-1944 ).

In 1850 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the newly opened Institute Agronomique in Versailles, which was in 1852 but closed again. The following year he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Medicine of the resignation of JBA Dumas became vacant. In 1866 he assumed the duties of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. In 1875 he resigned from the office of the Dean, but retaining the title of Honorary Dean. Wurtz was an honorary member of almost all scientific societies in Europe. He was one of the founders of the Société Chimique de France ( 1858), there was the first secretary and three times served as president.

In 1875, he was the first professor of organic chemistry at the Sorbonne.

Wurtz died in Paris in 1884, probably from complications of diabetes mellitus, and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Scientific work

His main study area were the hydrocarbons and organic nitrogen compounds. He synthesized for the first time ethylamine. This synthesis was supported by the considerations of the type theory of 1839 by Charles Frédéric Gerhardt and Auguste Laurent ( 1807-1853 ), after which the elements of a chemical the body can be replaced by other elements - in this case by the introduction of ammonia (NH3) in 1849 to be synthesized in accordance with new chemical compounds (see also History of the substitution reaction).

Wurtz generated so that a series of chemical bodies, from ammonia ( NH3) on the ethylamine ( C2H5NH2 ) for diethylamine ( ( C2H5) 2NH ) and ultimately triethylamine ( ( C2H5) 3N).

He discovered the ethylene glycol and the phosphorus oxychloride. According to him, and after Rudolph Fittig the Wurtz synthesis is named in the result from haloalkanes by the action of alkali metals hydrocarbons. This represents a further development of the actual synthesis Wurtzschen

Wurtz changed the primitive selected by Edward Frankland experimental setup - with ethyl iodide and zinc - and rather put a mixture consisting of two alkyl halides with metallic sodium to. In general, for the Wurtz synthesis following:

Where " R" is a saturated aliphatic hydrocarbon and " Hal " is a halogen and " Na " for sodium.

Since 1852, Wurtz, co-editor of the journal Annales de chimie et de the physique and since October 1858 Répertoire de chimie pure editor of the this year founded the Société Chimique de Paris.

Honors

• In 1886, the medal Alphée Dubois ( 1831-1905 ) made ​​a medal with Wurtz 'Portrait of the is still a copy in the Musée Carnavalet.
• Charles Adolphe Wurtz 's name immortalized on the Eiffel Tower, see: The 72 names on the Eiffel Tower.
• Since 1893, carries a street in the 13th arrondissement (Paris) his name.
• In the early 1920s, a statue of Wurtz was in front of the church Saint -Pierre- le -Jeune Protestant in Strasbourg, near his birthplace, erected.
• In the 1980s, named his home community Wolfi home, in the Wurtz his earliest youth, spent a street after him.
• Referred wurtzite as beta - zinc sulfide ( β - ZnS), is a rarely occurring mineral from the mineral class of " sulfides and sulfosalts ". The first description of wurtzite was made by the French chemist and mineralogist Charles Friedelim 1861. He named the mineral after his teacher Charles Adolphe Wurtz, in recognition of its scientific merit.

Works (selection)

• Histoire Chimique de la bile à l' état ​​sain et à l' état ​​pathologique (1839 )
• De la production de la chaleur dans les êtres organisés (1847 )
• Mémoire sur les ammoniaques composés (1850 ), Paris
• Leçons Chimique de philosophie (1864 ), Paris
• Leçons de Chimie professées (1864 )
• Traité de chimie médicale élémentaire ( 1864-65; 2nd ed 1868-75 ), 2 vols, Paris
• Leçons élémentaires de chimie modern (1866, 6th edition, 1892), Paris
• Histoire des doctrines chimiques depuis nos jours jusqu'à Lavoisier (1868 ), Paris
• Dictionnaire de chimie pure et appliquée ( 1868-78; Supplement, 1880-86, 2 vols, 2nd Supplement of Friedel, 1892), 5 volumes, Paris
• La théorie Atomique (1878; German Leipzig, 1879. )
• Traité de chimie biologique (1884 )
• Introduction à l' étude de la chimie (1885 )