Kurt Alder was a German organic chemist, scientist, and university professor. He is famous for receiving a Nobel prize for chemistry in 1950 for developing a process for producing synthetic organic compounds.
Background
Ethnicity:
Kurt Alder lost both his parents during the Second World War as they were captured by the Gestapo because they were Jews.
Alder was born on July 10, 1902 in the industrial area of Königshütte. Alder was the son of a schoolteacher whose family lived in the heavily industrialized area around Kattowitz (now Katowice) in Upper Silesia (modern day Chorzów, Upper Silesia, Poland). His family moved to Germany after the end of the First World War to retain their German citizenship when the area the family lived in became a part of Poland.
Education
Alder received his early education in the German schools of Kônigshütte. After completing the Oberrealschule in Berlin, Alder studied chemistry at the University of Berlin and later at the University of Kiel, where he received the doctorate in 1926. His dissertation, “On the Causes of the Azoester Reaction,” was carried out under the direction of Otto Diels.
After receiving his Ph.D. in 1926, Alder continued his work at Kiel, being made a reader in organic chemistry in 1930 and extraordinary professor of chemistry in 1934. He became a research director at the Bayer Werke in Leverkusen, a branch of I. G. Farbenindustrie, in 1936. In 1940 he returned to academic life as ordinary professor of chemistry and director of the chemical institute at the University of Cologne, where he served until his death. In 1949-1950 he was dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. With Diels, he received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1950.
Alder’s principal contributions to organic chemistry are associated with the diene synthesis, which grew out of his studies in Diels’s laboratory and was first reported in 1928. The synthetic method, frequently referred to as the Diels-Alder reaction, involves the addition of dienes (compounds with conjugated unsaturation, i.e., double bonds on adjacent carbon atoms) to dienophiles (compounds having a double bond activated by nearby carbonyl or carboxyl groups).
Although a few reactions of this type had been reported over a period of more than 30 years, Diels and Alder recognized the widespread and general nature of the reaction and subsequently spent much of their lives in developing the consequences. They called particular attention to the ease with which such reactions take place and the high yield of adduct.
Diels and Alder, utilizing the corresponding addition of cyclopentadiene to azoester (It will be recalled that azoester had been the subject of Alder’s doctoral dissertation.) The two investigators were able to show that, besides azoester and /7-quinone, they could obtain a reaction of cyclopen tadiene with the double bonds in maleic, citraconic, and itaconic acids. They also demonstrated that the adduct is always a six-membered ring, with the addition taking place between the double bond of the dienophile and the carbon atoms at the 1 and 4 positions in the diene. At first in association with Diels, and then independently with his own students, Alder studied the general experimental conditions of the diene synthesis and the overall scope of the method for synthetic purposes. He was a particularly able stereochemist and showed that diene addition took place at double bonds with a cis configuration. In his Nobel Prize address he listed more than a dozen diene types of widely differing structures that had been shown to participate in the reaction. Similarly, he showed that the reaction was equally general with respect to dienophiles, provided the double bond was properly activated by nearby carbonyl, carboxyl, cyano, or nitro groups. Unsaturated compounds without such properly placed activating groups failed to participate in an addition reaction. Many of the compounds studied were prepared in Alders laboratory for the first time. The Diels-Alder reaction also became useful in structural studies because it provided an analytical means for the detection of conjugated double bonds.
The bridged-ring compounds formed by the use of cyclic dienes were closely related to such naturally occurring terpenes as camphor and norcamphor. The diene synthesis stimulated the understanding of terpene chemistry by providing a synthetic method for preparing such compounds. The ease with which such reactions took place suggested that the diene synthesis might occur in biosynthetic reactions in nature. This role in biosynthesis was also found relevant in connection with anthraquinone-type dyes and a compound that could substitute for vitamin K in stimulating blood coagulation.
The diene synthesis proved to have broad applicability, not only in laboratory syntheses but in commercial operations as well. Commercial products prepared by Diels-Alder reactions include dyes, drugs, insecticides (e.g., dieldrin, aldrin, chlordane), lubricating oils, drying oils, synthetic rubber, and plastics.
During his period of industrial research Alder was involved in the study of polymerization processes connected with the production of Buna-type synthetic rubbers by polymerization of butadiene with such suitable compounds as styrene.
In 1955 he joined seventeen other Nobel laureates in issuing a declaration requesting the nations of the world to renounce war.
Kurt Alder died in Cologne, West Germany on June 20, 1958.
Kurt Alder was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1950 for developing a process for producing synthetic organic compounds. This process is known as the "Diels-Alder reaction" or the "diene synthesis" process. He shared the prize with another German chemist, Otto Diels, who was his guide while performing the experiment at the University of Kiel. The process paved the way for the creation of artificial rubber, alkaloids, plastics, dyes, drugs, drying oils, lubricating oils, and other organic compounds which were not available before. He wrote many papers on how totally new compounds could be derived from existing compounds.
In 1938 Kurt Alder was awarded the Emil Fischer Memorial Medal by the association of German Chemists. He also received an honorary M.D. degree from the University of Cologne in 1950.
In 1954 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Salamanca.
Another Alder`s achievement was accomplished on 1943 when he discovered the "ene reaction" which was very similar to the process of "diene synthesis". This process has also been used widely in the field of chemical synthesis.
The lunar crater Alder is named in his honour. The insecticide aldrin, created through a Diels–Alder reaction, is also named after Alder.
Dr. Kurt Alder was committed to world peace and joined a group of seventeen other Nobel laureates in 1951 in issuing an appeal to all nations asking them to refrain from going to war against other nations.
Membership
Alder was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the North Rhine-Westphalia Academy for Sciences and Arts.
Connections
Kurt Alder was married twice. First time he married Irene Hawthorne, who had been a prima ballerina, on March 10, 1948. He later got married to Christiane Tocco on September 16, 1965.
Father:
Joseph Alder
Mother:
Maria (Lammel) Alder
ex wife:
Irene Hawthorne
Wife:
Christiane Tocco
collaborator:
Otto Paul Hermann Diels
As early as 1927-1928, whilst at Kiel, Alder had studied problems of systematic organic chemistry in collaboration with his teacher O. Diels, and this lead to their joint discovery of the principle of the diene-synthesis, which they investigated and determined in all its aspects.
In 1950 Kurt Alder received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry.
In 1950 Kurt Alder received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry.
