Heinrich Debus (chemist)

Heinrich Debus ( born July 13, 1824 in Wolf Hagen, Electoral Hesse, † December 9, 1916 in Kassel ) was a chemist.

His father was a dyer Valentine Debus. After 1826 his mother died and his father had married her sister, he grew up a little later on with the grandparents.

In 1838 he attended the Kassel trade school, where he taught Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. He studied from 1845 to 1848 chemistry in Marburg, in 1847 as assistant to Bunsen. In 1848 he received his doctorate with a study of the red madder dye. (the first Marburger Doktordisputation in German ). 1851, went to Breslau as Bunsen, he was habilitated.

At the suggestion of Frederick Augustus Genth he followed them as a professor in Marburg. In 1851 he also wanted to read the history of chemistry, but then accepted a position at the Quaker institution in Hampshire, the Queenswood College (possibly the mediation of John Tyndall ), in place of Edward Frankland. In 1856, he worked briefly on Liebig 's laboratory in Munich. He also taught at Guy's Hospital and at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

He worked to gunpowder, sulfur- organic chemistry, for alcohol oxidation and hydrogen cyanide synthesis. In 1858 he presented the first imidazole by reaction of glyoxal with NH3 ago, where the obsolete name Glyoxalin comes. Hermann Kolbe denied that it is an aldehyde.

1871 or 1881 he became FRS. After his return to Germany in 1888 he devoted himself mainly historical works.

Publications

• Memories of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and his scientific achievements: For studies yield the natural sciences especially chemistry; Th.G. Fisher, 1901