Background

Alwin Mittasch was born on December 7, 1869, in Grossdehsa (now Löbau, Sachsen, Germany) to the family of a teacher in the Sorbian village Johann Mittasch and Carolina Beckel. He had a brother and three sisters.

Education

For lack of money, Alwin Mittasch was sent to a teacher-training school instead of a university. In 1892, he started attending public lectures at Leipzig University, being particularly drawn to those of Ostwald on energy relations in chemical systems. He resolved to become a middle school science teacher, but as his undergraduate studies progressed, and with Ostwald’s encouragement, he determined to become a physical chemist. After seven years of university studies (in addition to full-time teaching), Mittasch advanced to doctoral candidacy. His thesis under Max Bodenstein, on the kinetics and catalytic aspects of nickel carbonyl formation and decomposition, led directly to a career in catalytic chemistry. In 1901 he received a doctorate. A habilitation could not aim at Mittasch, because he had to show no Abitur.

Career

At nineteen Mittasch began teaching in a rural grade school. Three years later, in 1892, he secured an appointment to a city school in Leipzig.

After short interludes as Ostwald’s assistant and then as analyst in a lead and zinc fabricating company, Mittasch was hired by the BASF in 1904. Here Mittasch assisted Carl Bosch in seeking an industrial process for fixing nitrogen via cyanides or nitrides. This work was abandoned in 1909 in favor of the commercially more promising Haber ammonia synthesis directly from nitrogen and hydrogen. However, the experience that he had just gained helped Mittasch in seeking a cheaper catalyst than Haber’s osmium. His discovery of the utility of compounded catalysts formed the basis of a massive research program he directed at the BASF for the next two decades.

After his retirement in 1934, Mittasch made this last observation the basis of an elaborate philosophy of causality, about which he wrote two books and several articles. Much better received by critics than these often abstruse writings were his scholarly and extensive publications on the history of catalysis.

Achievements

• Alwin Mittasch managed to achieve recognition as a pioneering and systematic researcher in the development of catalysts for industrial ammonia synthesis using the Haber-Bosch process. The importance of his research was marked with the lending of the honorary doctorate of the Technical University of Munich and the Agricultural University of Berlin and by the appointment the professor by Baden-Württembergsche government in 1949. Alwin Mittasch street in Maxdorf and Alwin Mittasch place in Ludwigshafen are named in his honor. The Alwin Mittasch Prize from Deutsche Gesellschaft für chemisches Apparatewesen (German Society for Chemical Apparatus) is a prize for research on catalysts. It is named after Alwin Mittasch and has been awarded since 1990.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Katalyse und Determinismus 1938
  • Über katalytische Verursachung im biologischen Geschehen 1935
  • Kurze Geschichte der Katalyse in Praxis und Theorie 1939
  • Julius Robert Mayers Kausalbegriff: Seine Geschichtliche Stellung, Auswirkung und Bedeutung 1942
  • Unverganglichkeit Naturforschergedanken uber Unsterblichkeit 1947

Politics

Mittasch was not a political person. Though in 1933 he probably gave his vote for the national socialism, however, never was an ideological follower.

Views

Assuming that in the Haber process the metal catalyst briefly forms a nitride intermediate and remembering that nitride formation occurs best in the presence of certain stable oxides, Mittasch directed an exhaustive search that led not only to an optimal, cheap catalyst of iron, aluminum, and potassium oxides but also to much knowledge about catalyst poisons and activators. Besides the catalysts for important industrial processes, his research yielded much data on high pressure and temperature reactions in the gaseous phase. He became particularly impressed by the manner in which the selection of a specific catalytic mixture can favor the yield of the desired compound while inhibiting the formation of other possible products.

Membership

Alwin Mittasch was a member of the Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

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  Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities , Germany

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  German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , Germany

Personality

After he entered by the untimely death of his oldest son Heinz in 1932 early into the retirement, Mittasch resettled to Heidelberg and devoted himself to writing, music, and gardening.

Interests

• music, gardening

Connections

Alwin Mittasch married Dora Martha Jäger. They had two sons Heinz and Helmut.

Father:

Johann Mittasch

Mother:

Carolina Beckel

Wife:

Dora Martha Jäger

Son:

Heinz Mittasch

Son:

Helmut Mittasch

colleague:

Carl Bosch

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography: Volumes 9 & 10
  1981