Paul Karrer

Paul Karrer (* April 21, 1889 in Moscow, † June 18, 1971 in Zurich ) was a Swiss chemist and Nobel laureate in chemistry.

Life

The son of a dentist grew up in Switzerland, studied chemistry at the University of Zurich and in 1911 received his doctorate. Then Karrer was there assistant to the inorganic chemist Alfred Werner, worked from 1912 to 1918 on the synthesis of organic arsenic compounds in the laboratory of the physician Paul Ehrlich in Frankfurt and returned in 1918 as associate professor of organic chemistry at the University of Zurich back. From 1919 until his retirement in 1956 he worked there as a successor to Alfred Werner and Director of the Chemical Institute. In Zurich Karrer polysaccharides investigated, since 1926, plant pigments and vitamins, vitamins A (1931 ) and isolated vitamins K (1939) and synthesized, among other vitamins B2 and E. It also examined the constitution of carotenoids and flavins. In 1937 Karrer for his research on the structure of carotenoids, the flavins and vitamins A and B together with Walter Norman Haworth the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His 1927 published " textbook of organic chemistry " has been widely applied and translated. His research interests later included the investigation of therapeutically active substances, including especially curare alkaloids, which are used for Anesthesiology. Karrer was a member of several scientific academies, so since 1925 the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, as well as chemical and biochemical companies. He died in 1971 and was buried in the cemetery Fluntern.

Services

• Stereochemical studies of amino acids.
• 1931 Structure elucidation of vitamin A ( retinol).
• 1932 Structure elucidation and synthesis of vitamin B2 ( riboflavin)
• 1938 Structure elucidation and synthesis of vitamin E ( tocopherol)
• 1939 pure form of vitamin K1 ( phylloquinone )

• Carotenoids, 1948
• Textbook of Organic Chemistry, First Edition, Stuttgart, 1927