Hermann Staudinger

He married Magda Woit, a Latvian plant physiologist, in 1927. She remained his co-worker for years and her contributions were acknowledged by Staudinger while accepting the Nobel Prize. Magda was also a co-author of many of his publications.

He passed away on September 8, 1965, at the age of 84 years in Freiburg, West Germany.

He was born on March 23, 1881, in Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany to Dr. Franz Gottfried Christian Karl Georg Staudinger and his wife Auguste Staudinger. His father was a neo-Kantian philosopher.

He had three brothers, Karl August Friedrich Staudinger, Wilhelm Staudinger and Hans Wilhelm Staudinger and one sister Luise Federn.

He attended the Gymnasium in Worms and completed his matriculation in 1899.

Thereafter he enrolled at the ‘University of Halle’ and after a short while transferred to technical university at Darmstadt following his father’s new teaching job at Darmstadt.

He then furthered his studies in Munich and Halle, ultimately earning Ph.D. from the ‘University of Halle’ in 1903, submitting his thesis on the malonic esters of unsaturated compounds.

After completing his Ph.D. he joined the ‘University of Strasbourg’ where he worked under Professor Johannes Thiele, a noted German chemist, and made his first discovery, the ketenes. The Ketenes were studied by Staudinger as a class, the first study of its kind by anyone. These are highly reactive organic compounds that are defined by form R′R″C=C=O, which later proved to be synthetically significant intermediary in producing antibiotics like amoxicillin and penicillin.

His research followed by his discovery of ketenes became the subject of his ‘Habilitation’, the highest academic qualification bestowed on a scholar, which he received in 1907. The same year in November he was inducted by the ‘Institute of Chemistry’ of the ‘Technical University of Karlsruhe’ as an Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry. During his tenure at the university he became successful in isolating several useful organic compounds.

He started investigations on polymers while conducting his research on the synthesis of isoprene, monomer of natural rubber, in 1910 for the German chemical company ‘BASF’. Through his groundbreaking research work he published a paper in 1920 where he suggested that polymers like rubber, starch, proteins and cellulose are long-chain molecules that are formed out of chemical interaction of molecular units.

This idea was contrary to the prevailing concept suggested by leading chemists of those times like Heinrich Wieland and Emil Fischer, who believed that these high-molecular weight compounds were a result of physical aggregation of small molecules into colloids.

In 1912 he joined the faculty at the ‘Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’ located at Zürich, Switzerland and served the institute for fourteen years till 1926.

His path-breaking illustration of the nature of high molar masses that he termed as macromolecules led to a new field of chemistry - polymer chemistry. The potentiality of the field that he viewed long back proved to be of immense use with his pioneering research work leading the world to a new era of textiles, myriad plastics and other polymeric materials. While the consumers are benefited with more affordable products, the engineers are able to develop lighter and more durable structures.

His research on polymers also helped in the development of molecular biology that deals with understanding the structure of proteins as well as other high molar masses of living things.