Werner Emmanuel Bachmann

Werner Emmanuel Bachmann ( born November 13, 1901 in Detroit, Michigan, † March 22, 1951 ) was an American chemist.

Life and work

The son of a Swiss immigrant Bachmann went to Detroit to Western Technical High School. After two years at the Detroit Junior College, he studied at the University of Michigan Chemical Engineering ( Chemical Engineering ). In 1923 he received a Bachelor of Science degree. One of his professors in Ann Arbor was Moses Gomberg. In 1924 he received the Master of Science. In the same year he developed along with Gomberg radical substitution leading to biphenyls aromatics, the Gomberg - Bachmann reaction. Shortly Bachmann worked for Allied Chemical & Dye Company (now Honeywell International). In 1926 he became a Ph.D. doctorate. A year later he married Marie Knaphurst from Chicago, with the Bachmann two children ( Joan Marie and Roger Werner) had. In 1928, he went to Zurich and worked with Paul Karrer on the chemistry of lycopene. In 1929 he went back to Michigan, where he became Assistant Professor. In 1931 he was appointed to the same position at the University of Illinois. In 1933, he received the Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan. For Associate Professor Bachmann was promoted in 1935. In the same year he went to Europe and worked with James Wilfred Cook at the Royal Cancer Hospital in London and at Heinrich Otto Wieland in Munich. A year later he went back to Michigan, where he was appointed in 1939 as professor of chemistry. In 1940 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. During the Second World War he worked for an improved synthesis for the high explosive RDX explosives (RDX ), which is now called the Bachmann process. For his work on the synthesis he received in 1945 the Naval Ordnance Award and 1948 the Presidential Certificate of Merit, as well as by the British government, the King's Medal.

He carried out the first total synthesis of a steroid hormone, Equilinin ( equine estrogen ).

Bachmann was editor of the journals Journal of the American Chemical Society ( JACS ), Journal of Organic Chemistry, Organic Reactions and Organic Syntheses. He was author or co-author of over 150 publications.

On March 22, 1951 Bachmann died of a heart defect.