Giulio Natta

Giulio Natta ( born February 26, 1903 in Imperia, † May 2, 1979 in Bergamo ) was an Italian chemist.

Life and work

Natta studied chemical engineering at the Milan Polytechnic, where he obtained his doctorate in 1927. From 1933 he was professor at the University of Pavia and Director of the Institute of General Chemistry for two years. In 1935 he took the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University La Sapienza in Rome. Within a year he took over the Institute of Industrial Chemistry at the Polytechnic of Turin.

He worked at that time in various fields of chemistry. So he examined the properties of plastics by means of X-ray and electron diffraction, led by kinetic studies of methanol synthesis and began the manufacture of synthetic rubber. Furthermore, he examined the polymerization of olefins, he ( with them all side chains are regularly distributed in a plane ) discovered the stereospecific polymerization of olefins and Ethinverbindungen as well as the asymmetric synthesis of optically active polymers, for which he with Karl Ziegler in 1963 the Nobel Prize for chemistry received.

The Ziegler- Natta catalysts are named after these Nobel Prize winners. Are metal complex catalysts in the reduction of certain transition metal compounds (such as titanium (III ) chloride ) are formed, and force the stereospecific polymerization of olefins at atmospheric pressure with suitable organometallic compounds (such as diethylaluminum chloride ).