Adolph Frank

Adolph Frank ( born January 20, 1834 in blocks, today Saxony-Anhalt, † May 30, 1916 in Charlottenburg, today Berlin) was a German chemist. End of the 1850s he realized the importance of potash as a fertilizer and built in 1861 in Staßfurt the first potash. Frank is considered the founder of potash and cellulose industry in Germany. Together with Nikodem Caro, he developed a "method for the representation of cyanogen compounds of carbides ", which was improved by Fritz Rothe and is known under the name Rothe Frank Caro process today.

Life and work

Adolph Frank was born in the city blocks in the Altmark. His father, the Jewish businessman Salomon Philipp Frank, running, as his grandfather, in blocks a general store. Adolph Frank attended secondary school in Strelitz, later, the Jacobson School in Seesen am Harz and occurred because the chemistry particularly interested him, a pharmacist in Osterburg in teaching.

After the demolition of his business, he studied from 1855 to 1857 Pharmacy, Natural Sciences and Technology at the University of Berlin, where he passed the state examination for pharmacists with a score of 1 in the same year. The funds for his studies he earned by night services in a pharmacy. 1861-62 he received his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Göttingen with a thesis on the production of sugar. Even before the completion of the dissertation, he had in 1858 as part of his work for a Staßfurter beet sugar factory ( Bennecke, Hecker & Co.) filed his first patent ( method of purification of beet juice by clay soaps), should follow the other. The focus of his further work was then the use of potassium salts as artificial fertilizers in agriculture.

He discovered and opened after 1860 the Kalisalzlager at Staßfurt and Leopoldshall, thereby founding the German and at the same time world potash industry. In this work, he settled in 1861 grant the patent on the potash fertilizers based on potassium chloride. Other inventions were a process for the industrial production of bromine from overburden salts.

His work in the field of art fertilization led to the introduction of the Thomas flour (also: Thomas slag ) for use as a fertilizer. In the 1890s, the chemist Fritz Rothe found that calcium can absorb nitrogen at high temperatures around 1100 ° C, and calcium cyanamide and calcium cyanamide is formed, which laid the foundation for the nitrogen fertilizer and the Kalkstickstoffindustrie. Together with the German - Polish chemist Nikodem Caro acquired Adolph Frank the patent for the Kalkstickstoffverfahren and developed it further in 1899 for the industrial production ( Rothe Frank Caro process). In the same year both chemists founded together with other shareholders, the Cyanidgesellschaft mbH, emerged from the later Bavarian nitrogen AG (BStW ) and later SKW Trostberg AG in consolation mountain.

The brown color of the beer bottle to protect the contents from exposure to light, also goes back to him. He also researched and Carl Linde at the production of hydrogen for airships.

Awards

1907, the Liebig Medal of the Society of German Chemists, he was awarded. In his workplace Staßfurt a road and the high school are named after him. A place in the city in his hometown of blocks is named after him.