Edgar Heilbronner

Edgar Heilbronner ( born May 13, 1921 in Munich, † 28 August, 2006 Herrliberg ) was a German -Swiss chemist ( Theoretical Chemistry ).

Life and work

The son of an antiques dealer attended school first in Munich, then from 1935 to 1940, the Collège de Genève, which he left with the Matura Type C. From 1940 to 1944 he studied at the ETH Zurich and graduated in 1944 with Hans Eduard Fierz at the Institute of Organic Technology as a graduate engineer - chemist from. In 1949 he earned his doctorate under Placidus A. Plattner in the Laboratory for Organic Chemistry, ETH Zurich. As a post - graduate student, he was from 1950 to 1952 in Verner Schomaker and Kenneth Hedberg at Caltech. From 1954 he was a lecturer at the ETH Zurich and from 1959 Associate Professor and in 1964 Full Professor of Theoretical Organic Chemistry. In 1968 he went as Professor of Physical Chemistry and Head of the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the University of Basel, where he retired in 1988.

He dealt with the molecular orbital method of Erich Hückel ( HMO theory ), structure and spectra of aromatics and photoelectron spectroscopy. In 1964 he published the idea of aromatic compounds with Möbius strip topology, but which were synthesized only in 2003.

In 1974 he received the August-Wilhelm -von- Hofmann Medal, he was awarded the Marcel Benoist Prize (1977) and the Heyrovský Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He was a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham and Fribourg ( Switzerland ). He was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Heilbronner Hückel lecture of the German Chemical Society and the Swiss Chemical Society is named after him and Hückel.

Heilbronner was naturalized in 1956 in Zurich.

Writings

• Hans Bock: The HMO model and its application. 3 volumes. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim, 1968-1970; 2nd edition 1978.