Background
Ernst Fischer was born on November 10, 1918, in Miichen-Solln, the son of Professor Doctor Kali Tobias Fischer and Valentine Danzer.
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1966
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1974
(“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to rec...)
“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.”—Ernst Fischer Reissued with an introduction by John Berger, The Necessity of Art is a beautifully written meditation on art’s importance in viewing the world in which we live. In this wide-ranging and erudite exploration of literary and fine art, Fischer looks at the relationship between the creative imagination and social reality, arguing that truthful art must both reflect existence in all its flaws and imperfections, and help show how change and improvement might be brought about. With his emphasis on the individual’s need to engage with society, his rejection of rampant consumerism and hypertechnology, and his indomitable optimism, this radical, affirmative and humane vision of the artistic endeavor remains as timely today as when it was first published sixty years ago.
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(A brief, clear, and faithful exposition of Marx's major p...)
A brief, clear, and faithful exposition of Marx's major premises, with particular attention to historical context.
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Ernst Fischer was born on November 10, 1918, in Miichen-Solln, the son of Professor Doctor Kali Tobias Fischer and Valentine Danzer.
Fischer attended the Theresien Gymnasium (high school), graduating in 1937. Following this, Fischer spent two years compulsory service in the German army, a stint which was extended with the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Between serving in Poland, France, and Russia, Fischer was able, in the winter of 1941-42, to begin his studies in chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Munich (Technical University of Munich). Captured by the Americans, he was held in a prisoner of war camp until repatriation in the fall of 1945. He renewed his chemistry studies in Munich in 1946, studying under Walter Hieber, well known for his early work on combining metals with molecules of carbon and oxygen, or metal-carbonyl chemistry. Fischer earned his doctor's degree in 1952 for research on carbon-to-nickel bonds; his course was well set by this time for a career in the new field of organometallic chemistry.
After earning his doctorate, Fischer stayed at the Technische Hochschule, working as an assistant researcher. He and his first research students were drawn to a puzzling compound reported by the chemists T. Kealy and P. Pauson. In an attempt to link two cyclopentadiene (five-carbon) rings together, these scientists discovered an unknown compound which they believed involved an iron atom linked between two consecutive longitudinal rings of carbon. The intervening iron atom seemed to join with a carbon atom on each of the rings. That such metal-to-carbon bonds exist was not the surprising thing. In fact, such unstable bonds are necessary for catalytic processing of such compounds.
Fischer and his research team, including W. Pfab, carried out meticulous X-ray crystallography on ferrocene, elucidating the compound’s structure and Proving Wilkinson’s theory correct. The examination and discovery of the structure of ferrocene was a Watershed event in the field of organometallic chemistry, spawning a new generation of inorganic chemists.
Prom ferrocene, Fischer and his team went on to determine the structure of, as well as synthesize other transition metals—those substances at a stage in between metal and organic—especially dibenzene-chromium, an aromatic hydrocarbon. Such substances are termed aromatic not because of smell, but because of structure. They are hydrocarbons in closed rings which are capable of uniting with other atom groups. Fischer showed dibenzenechromium to be another sandwich compound with two rings of benzene joined by an atom of chromium. This bit of research earned him world-wide renown in scientific circles, as the neutral chromium molecule and neutral benzene molecules had been thought to be uncombinable. Fischer’s rise in academia parallelled the swift advance of his research: by 1954 he was an assistant professor at the Technische Hochschule; by 1957, a full professor at the University of Munich; and in 1964 he came back to the Technische Hochschule—by now called the Technische Universität or Technical University— as director of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry, replacing the retiring director and his former mentor, Professor Hieber.
Fischer and his team at Munich’s Technical University were successfully synthesizing both the first carbyne complexes and carbyne complexes (carbon atoms triply joined to metal atoms) which heralded an entirely new class of metal complexes of a transitional sort and spurred research in the field.
In 1973 Fischer was awarded the Nobel Prize, sharing it with the English Wilkinson for their “pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so-called sandwich compounds.
In addition to the Nobel, Fischer, a life-long bachelor, has also won the Gottingen Academy Prize in 1957 and the Alfred Stock Memorial Prize of the Society of German Chemists in 1959. Among the many commercial and industrial spin-offs of his work is the creation of catalysts employed in the drug industry and also in oil refining, leading to the manufacture of fuels with low lead content.
(A brief, clear, and faithful exposition of Marx's major p...)
(“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to rec...)
Fisher was a member of Austrian Academy of Sciences, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
In 1972 he was given an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy of the University of Munich.
He was an honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and full membership in the German Academy of Scientists.
