Kurt Alder

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.

Kurt Alder died in Cologne, West Germany on June 20, 1958.

Kurt Alder was born on July 10, 1902 in Konigshutte, Upper Silesia in Prussia which is now known as Chorzow and is situated in Poland. His father, Joseph Alder, taught at a school in Kattowitz. Kurt spent his childhood in the industrial environment of Konigshutte.

His early education was completed in the German schools in Konigshutte.

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.

After completing Oberrealschule in Berlin he studied chemistry at the University of Berlin from 1922 to 1923 and later at the University of Kiel.

In 1926 he received his doctorate from the University of Kiel.

Kurt Alder started working as a research scholar in Otto Diels laboratory in the University of Kiel after receiving his doctorate.

In 1928 while working with Diels on the structure of organic compounds he discovered a process by which a simple ‘diene’ compound such as ‘butadiene’ could be transformed into a complex compound. This process is known as the ‘Diels-alder reaction’ and was the precursor for the production of synthetic plastic, rubber, alkaloids, insecticides and many other artificial organic compounds.

During this time he worked with a number of younger colleagues at the laboratory on experiments that dealt with stereochemical reactions particularly in the case of unsaturated systems. He also experimented with the behavior of double bonds in carbon rings and the ways in which intermolecular arrangements were formed.

He was appointed a Reader in the department of Organic Chemistry at the University of Kiel in 1930 and was made professor in 1934. He held this post until 1936.

In 1936 he was made a research director at a branch of the largest chemical company, I. G. Farbenindustrie in Leverkusen called Bayer Werker. Here he applied his theory to the development of plastics and also developed methods in which synthetic rubber known as ‘Buna’ could be produced.

The doctoral thesis of Kurt Alder was ‘Uber die Ursachen der Azoester-reaktion’ or ‘On the causes of The Azoester Reaction’.

Most of the papers on the experiments conducted by him were reported in scientific journals such as ‘Angewandte Chemie’, ‘Berichte der Deutschen Chemisen Gesellschaft’ and ‘Justus Liebig’s Annalen der Chemie’.