Odd Hassel

Odd Hassel ( born May 17, 1897 in Kristiania ( now Oslo ), † 11 May 1981 in Oslo) was a Norwegian chemist.

In 1969 he was joined by the English chemist Sir Derek HR Barton the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their work in the development of Konformationsbegriffes and its application in chemistry".

Life and work

His father was the physicist Ernst Hassel, his mother was Mathilde Klaveness. After completing his studies from 1915 to 1920 in Oslo and a year of leisure in France and Italy, he went in the fall of 1922 for six months to Munich, where he worked at Kasimir Fajans. Then he was in Berlin- Dahlem at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. In 1924 he received his doctoral degree here. In 1925 he returned to Norway. At the University of Oslo in 1926 he became professor of Physical and Electro - chemistry. From 1934 to 1964 he was Professor of Physical Chemistry in Oslo.

In the early years of the Oslo Hassel activity mainly focused on inorganic chemistry, from 1930 he turned, however, the study of the molecular structure by electron diffraction to, especially cyclohexane and its derivatives. In 1943 he was imprisoned by the German occupying forces and released back in November 1944. After the war he continued his research and tipped the chair structure of cyclohexane on.

Writings

• Crystal Chemistry, Dresden, Theodor Steinkopf 1934