Friedrich Asinger
Friedrich Asinger ( born June 26, 1907 in outdoor / Lower Danube, Austria, † March 7, 1999 in Aachen ) was an Austrian chemist and Professor of Chemistry. He became known thanks to his work in the fields of petrochemistry, substitution reactions of alkanes and olefins. He is named after the Asinger reaction, a multi-component reaction that produces the 3- thiazoline. From his scientific school numerous industrial chemist and later professors emerged.
Life and work
Youth and studies
Asinger grew up with an older brother and two sisters in Lower Austria, the son of the head of a paper and cardboard factory on. His mother came from a respected family of innkeepers. His High School gained Asinger 1924 at the secondary school in Krems / Donau age of 17. He studied chemistry at the Technical University of Vienna on where it was founded in 1932 as an academic student of Friedrich Böck ( 1876-1958 ) received his doctorate with a thesis " On the influence of substituents on the rate of hydrolysis of benzal chloride ". He completed all the tests mentioned with distinction.
First experiences in industry and academia
Extensive professional experience as a department manager at the factory for chemically prepared papers " Koreska ", as a chemist at the Vienna "Vacuum Oil" and as a research chemist in the " Central Testing Laboratory of ammonia Werke GmbH ", Merseburg / Leuna.
Habilitated Asinger 1943 at the State University of Graz, which he started his scientific research. First milestones include the teacher sample ( seventh Dezember1943 ) and the lectureship (23 February 1944) at the Martin -Luther- University Halle- Wittenberg, after which follow several positions in industrial and academic research, so a job as an honorary lecturer at the University Hall with Karl Ziegler.
With the war Friedrich Asinger suffered a major setback professionally. Because of his membership in the Nazi Party in Austria since 1933, he lost his post in late 1945 as an honorary lecturer at the Martin Luther University. Despite the written support of the Leuna -Werke - also with reference to the benevolence of his Russian superiors - and supporting letters of various social organizations, were his efforts to make this dismissal reversed, ultimately without success.
Years in the Soviet Union
In October 1946, Asinger was deported together with other engineers, chemists and physicists of the Leuna -Werke in Ossawakim action in the Soviet Union and subsequently in Dzerzhinsk, near Gorky, housed, where he worked on the development of rocket fuels as group leader.
From 1951 he worked in Rubeschnoje in the Donbass. During the eight- year-long stay, he observed that the reaction of ketones or aldehydes, sulfur or hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia or amines provided various nitrogen - and sulfur-containing heterocycles. From this period date his monographs " Chemistry and Technology of waxes " and " Chemistry and Technology of mono-olefins ", the 1956 and 1957 publications of the Academy -Verlag Berlin.
Years in the GDR
In 1954 he returned to Germany, three years later than most other scientists of the Leuna -Werke. He worked in Leuna and worked in parallel as an honorary professor in Halle- Wittenberg. In 1957 he followed a call to the chair of Organic Chemistry at the Martin Luther University in Halle ( Saale) and later at the Technical University of Dresden. Asinger encouraged HGO Becker and other senior assistant to the now popular " Organikum " to write a workbook for organic chemistry basic practical training in the study of chemistry, whose total circulation of almost 400,000. The book was launched by Asinger as an institute obligation on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the GDR on the way.
Professor at the RWTH
In 1959 he traveled from as citizens of the Republic of Austria from the GDR and accepted a call to the RWTH Aachen, where he became head of the Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry.
In his years as a professor of several universities, he developed the chemistry of nitrogen - sulfur heterocycles further, so that it is now called Asinger chemistry. A milestone of this chemistry is the total synthesis of the drug D -penicillamine in a thirteen- step synthesis, starting from isobutyraldehyde, ammonia and sulfur. In all, he published 118 papers on the subject. In 1972 Asinger became Professor Emeritus in Aachen.
In 1986 he showed in his book methanol. Chemical and energy resource paths for methanol economy that has picked up later, other authors such as George A. Olah again.
From the scientific school of Friedrich Asinger went - in addition to many industrial chemists - a total of 26 professors out later, 10 of them from the Leunaer and Dresdner time. Known students Asingers are Heribert Offermanns, a longtime board member of Degussa AG, Egon Fanghänel, professor of organic chemistry at the Technische Hochschule Merseburg and then at the University of Halle- Wittenberg and Karl Gewald the period covered by the Gewald reaction and his work on field of thiophene - and heterocyclic chemistry became known.
Honors
The " Faculty of Science " TH " Carl Schorlemmer " Leuna- Merseburg and the Johannes Kepler University (Linz) awarded him an honorary doctorate. He was winner of the " Federal Cross of Merit, First Class ", the " Carl Engler Medal" DGMK, the Hans Höfer Medal of the "Austrian Society for Petroleum Sciences ," the " Freiherr Auer von Welsbach Medal" of the "Austrian Chemical Society " and member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.
Works (selection)
- Methanol, chemical and energy resource. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-05-500341-1.
- Chemistry and Technology of mono-olefins. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1957.
- Chemistry and Technology of paraffin hydrocarbons. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1959.
- Introduction to petroleum chemicals. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1959.