Background
Bachmann was born on November 13, 1901 in Detroit, Michigan, the second of four sons of Arnold William Bachmann, a Swiss immigrant who became a minister with his own church in Detroit, and Bertha Wurster Bachmann.
Bachmann was born on November 13, 1901 in Detroit, Michigan, the second of four sons of Arnold William Bachmann, a Swiss immigrant who became a minister with his own church in Detroit, and Bertha Wurster Bachmann.
He attended Detroit public schools and Detroit Junior College before entering the University of Michigan as a chemical engineering student. He received the B. S. degree in 1923. Under the influence of Moses Gomberg he then decided to specialize in organic chemistry, earning the M. S. in 1924 and a Ph. D. in 1926.
Bachmann's professional life took place entirely at the University of Michigan. He was a member of the faculty from 1925 to 1951, first as lecturer in chemistry (1925 - 1928), then as assistant professor (1929 - 1935), associate professor (1935 - 1939), and professor (1939 - 1947). In 1947 he was appointed to the newly created Moses Gomberg University Professorship.
In 1928 Bachmann was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, spending a year in Zurich in the laboratory of the renowned chemist Paul Karrer. In 1933 the university conferred on him its highest honor, the Henry Russel Award for outstanding teaching ability and research; two years later he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and worked in London at the Royal Cancer Hospital and in Munich with Heinrich Wieland, an expert on steroids.
His first publication, in 1924, was the product of his first year of work under Gomberg and described a method for coupling benzene rings to establish a diphenyl linkage - a reaction now known as the Gomberg-Bachmann reaction. There followed a long series of papers with Gomberg on free radicals, molecular rearrangements, and reaction mechanisms, subjects largely dictated by Gomberg's interests. Bachmann's own subsequent studies focused on organic synthetic methods, especially the synthesis of polycyclic compounds of physiological interest. There had been a rapid development from the late 1920's in both the chemistry of steroids and the isolation of carcinogens, and Bachmann worked on both subjects simultaneously. During the 1930's he prepared more potent and faster-acting carcinogenic hydrocarbons than any yet known.
In 1939 he synthesized equilenin, the first synthesis of a sex hormone. This achievement represented a milestone in the field because it was a successful synthesis of great complexity and because it also confirmed conclusions on structure hitherto based on degradation reactions. Bachmann's synthetic procedures proved to be so useful that they were used in many laboratories for a wide variety of syntheses; the general method developed from them was applicable to the synthesis of the related estrogenic hormones, estrone and androsterone.
In 1941 the requirements of war-related research forced Bachmann to set aside his hormone work. The Office of Scientific Research and Development asked him to work on the high explosive RDX (cyclonite). It was the most powerful of the non-atomic high explosives and potentially of great military value. RDX had been known since 1899, but there was no satisfactory procedure for its manufacture. Bachmann had no previous experience in the chemistry of explosives.
is discovery of a new method for preparing RDX testifies to his versatility and experimental ingenuity. He assembled a staff of chemists, and by teamwork they elucidated many features of the chemistry of RDX. Within a year his new process had been fully developed. The Tennessee Eastman Company constructed the world's largest munitions plant at Kingsport, Tenn. , to produce RDX in large quantities. The explosive played an important role in the war and was especially used in antisubmarine warfare. During the war years Bachmann also studied the chemistry of penicillin. Several laboratories in the United States and Great Britain undertook cooperative efforts to establish the structure and to synthesize the antibiotic, and Bachmann worked on the problem of synthesis. By 1945 he had improved the methods for synthesizing fragments of penicillin and had actually obtained some penicillin in low yield. But no further work was done by his approach, since his method did not provide yields high enough to be useful.
His weakened condition led to death of a heart ailment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the age of forty-nine.
Bachmann's most outstanding achievement was his work with steroid hormones. His reputation, however, lies mainly in his contributions to fundamental knowledge on organic chemistry, and his more than 150 publications are a source of reliable methods and experimental procedures of wide use in many areas of organic chemistry. In 1948, in recognition of his wartime services, he received the U. S. Presidential Certificate of Merit and the King's Medal of Great Britain.
In addition to his researches, Bachmann was very active in the chemical profession, serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Organic Reactions.
Bachmann was an exceptionally gifted experimentalist and constructive thinker.
On September 14, 1927, he married Marie Knaphurst of Chicago, whom he had known since childhood.
