Kurt Alder

Kurt Alder (* July 10, 1902 in Chorzów, Upper Silesia, † June 20, 1958 in Cologne ) was a German chemist who received the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Life and work

Kurt Alder grew up in his native town of Chorzow on, was slammed to 1922 East Upper Silesia Poland and he fled with his parents via Berlin to Kiel, where he studied chemistry and received his doctorate in 1926 with Otto Diels about the causes and course of the Azoesterreaktionen. In 1936 he went as a department manager for I.G. Farben plant in Leverkusen, where he worked primarily on the development of synthetic rubber Buna. In 1939 he was elected a member of the Scholars Academy Leopoldina. Since 1940 he had held the chair of chemistry at the University of Cologne.

Alder received in 1950 together with his teacher Otto Diels the Nobel Prize in Chemistry " for their discoveries and the development of the diene synthesis ", which is also called Diels- Alder reaction. In 1955 he was elected a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

1979 was a big crater on the moon in his honor the name Alder crater. The largest lecture hall in the Chemistry Department of the University of Cologne is named after Kurt Alder.