Background

Rudolph Fittig was born on December 6, 1835, in Hamburg, Germany. He was the son of Johann Andreas Fittig, the director of a private school in Hamburg.

Education

Fittig studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, graduating as Ph.D. with a dissertation on acetone in 1858, under the supervision of Heinrich Limpricht and Friedrich Wöhler.

Career

After graduating, Rudolph became a privatdozent at the University of Göttingen. In 1866 Fittig became extraordinary professor of chemistry and worked closely with Wöhler. At this time he established a friendship with Friedrich Beilstein. In 1865, with Beilstein and Hans Hübner, he took over the editorship of the Zeitschrift für Chemie und Pharmacie, which had been edited since 1859 by Emile Erlenmeyer but had lost nearly all its subscribers. The three new editors produced a more successful journal under the title Zeitschrift für Chemie, and the venture lasted until 1871.

In 1870 Fittig became professor of chemistry at the University of Tübingen, where he remained until he replaced Adolf von Baeyer as professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg in 1876. Here he constructed a new chemical laboratory, begun in 1877 and completed in 1882. Fittig served as rector of the university in 1895-1896; he retired in 1902, but continued to publish the results of his researches until nearly the end of his life.

Besides his activities on the Zeitscrift für Chemie he served as an associate editor of the Annalen der Chemie from 1895 to 1910, wrote a massive textbook of chemistry which appeared in 1871 and went through a number of editions, and edited the tenth edition of Wohler’s textbook of organic chemistry in 1877. His bibliography lists 399 research papers.

Fittig trained many chemists who subsequently became well-known, including a number of Englishmen and Americans. Among the best-known of these were William Ramsay, noted for his work on the inert gases, who received his degree in 1872; and Ira Remsen, whose doctorate was conferred in 1870, and who worked on saccharin and was later president of Johns Hopkins University.

Fittig was essentially an experimentalist, with little interest in theoretical chemistry. He was active at a time when the structural theory of organic chemistry was producing its most striking results, and his extensive studies on preparative organic chemistry contributed much to this development. For his doctoral dissertation he studied the action of sodium on anhydrous acetone, in the course of which work he discovered pinacol. This utilization of sodium in an organic reaction probably led him to extend the studies begun by Wurtz on the reaction of sodium with organic halogen compounds. The action of sodium on benzene halides led Fittig to the discovery of a number of homologous aromatic compounds, including biphenyl. This reaction is known to organic chemists as the Wurtz-Fittig reaction. Fittig was led by these studies to the investigation of other aromatic compounds, and he carried out work on mesitylene and its derivatives, naphthalene, and fluorene. He was an independent discoverer of phenanthrene in coal tar. In 1873 he proposed the quinoid structure for benzoquinone, a structure later used to explain the behavior of numerous organic dyestuffs. After 1873 Fittig worked chiefly on unsaturated acids and lactones.

Achievements

• Rudolph Fittig discovered the pinacol coupling reaction, mesitylene, diacetyl, and biphenyl. He studied the action of sodium on ketones and hydrocarbons. He discovered the Fittig reaction or Wurtz–Fittig reaction for the synthesis of alkylbenzenes, he proposed a diketone structure for benzoquinone and isolated phenanthrene from coal tar. He discovered and synthesized the first lactones and investigated structures of piperine naphthalene and fluorene.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Wohler's Outlines Of Organic Chemistry 1887
  • Grundriss der Chemie 1872

Connections

Rudolph married in 1864 and had three sons and three daughters. His wife died while the children were still young, and he raised them by himself.

Father:

Johann Andreas Fittig

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography