Otto Diels

Otto Diels ( born January 23, 1876 in Hamburg, † March 7, 1954 in Kiel ) was a German chemist. With his pupil Kurt Alder, he received the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the Diels- Alder reaction.

Life

Diels visited the Joachimsthalsche high school and studied chemistry at the Friedrich -Wilhelms -Universität zu Berlin with Emil Fischer. He graduated in 1899 and received a doctorate in phil .. He obtained in 1915 a professorship and moved a year later as a professor at the Christian -Albrechts -University of Kiel. In 1925/26 he was its rector. Until 1945 he headed the Department of Chemistry. His research interests were the constitution of steroids, dehydration reactions with selenium, α -diketones, urethanes, and carbon suboxide.

Honors

• Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (1922 )
• Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1950 )
• Great Federal Cross of Merit (1952 )
• Otto Diels Institute of Organic Chemistry in Kiel with a bronze plaque at the entrance (2005)
• Dielsweg in Düsternbrook