Georg Wittig

Georg Wittig married Waltraud Ernst in 1931. His wife, who also worked in von Auwers’s group, had a doctorate degree and supported her husband in his scientific endeavors until her death in 1978. The couple had three daughters.

He lived a long life and suffered from ill health during his later years. He died on August 26, 1987, a few weeks after his 90th birthday.

Georg Wittig was born on June 16, 1897, in Berlin, German Empire, and grew up in Kassel where his father was a professor of applied arts. As a young boy he learned to play the piano at the behest of his music loving mother.

After finishing his schooling in 1916, he decided to study chemistry at the University of Tübingen. However, his studies were interrupted by the ongoing World War I and the young man was drafted into the army and made a lieutenant in the cavalry of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel).

During his military career he was taken a prisoner of war by the English forces in 1918. He was desperate to resume his studies upon his release in 1919. But at that time all the German universities were overcrowded and Wittig was not able to get into any educational institution.

He made a direct appeal to Karl von Auwers, who was professor for organic chemistry at the University of Marburg at the time, and got selected into the institution. A bright student, he performed well in his studies. He graduated in 1923 and was awarded the Ph.D. in organic chemistry after three years in 1926.

Georg Wittig embarked on an academic career on the advice of von Auwers and became a lecturer in chemistry at Marburg after the completion of his Habilitation (permission to lecture in a university). During his years there he became good friends with Karl Ziegler, who was also doing his habilitation with von Auwers.

In 1932, he was invited by Karl Fries to join the TU Braunschweig as a professor. The 1930s was a period of political chaos in Germany with the Nazi party increasingly gaining power. Fries was strictly opposed to the Nazis due to which the Nazis tried to get rid of him. Wittig, who supported Fries, feared for his own job too.

The Nazis were eventually successful in forcing Fries into retirement. Fortunately for Wittig, Hermann Staudinger, the director of the Chemical Institute at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, invited him to become an associate professor at that institution in 1937.

Wittig’s tenure in Freiburg was marked by intensive research which laid the foundations of carbanion chemistry. During his years at the university he performed significant works including the formulation of dehydrobenzene and the discovery of the new class of ammonium ylides.

In 1943, Wilhelm Schlenk, the head of the organic chemistry department at the University of Tübingen, died. The following year, Georg Witting succeeded Schlenk and was appointed full professor and director of the university’s Chemical Institute.

He discovered the chemical reaction of an aldehyde orketone with a triphenyl phosphonium ylide to give an alkene and triphenylphosphine oxide, now known as the Wittig reaction. It is widely used in organic synthesis for the preparation of alkenes.

Georg Wittig discovered the 1,2-Wittig rearrangement which is a categorization of chemical reactions in organic chemistry, and consists of a 1,2-rearrangement of an ether with an alkyllithium compound.

He is also credited with the discovery of the [2,3]-Wittig rearrangement which refers to the transformation of an allylic ether into a homoallylic alcohol via a concerted, pericyclic process.