Otto Diels

He lost two of his sons at the eastern front during World War II.

His home was also razed to the ground by Allied bombing during the later stages of the World War II.

Otto Diels was born on January 23, 1876 in Hamburg, Germany. His father, Hermann Diels, was a professor at the University of Berlin and taught classical philology. His mother, Bertha Dubell, was a district judge’s daughter.

He had two brothers named Ludwig and Paul who went on to become professors in the fields of botany and Slavic philology respectively.

When he was two-year-old his family moved from Hamburg to Berlin where his father was offered a professorship at the university.

He did his early schooling from 1882 to 1895 at the ‘Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium’ in Berlin.

In 1895 he enrolled at the University of Berlin to study chemistry along with other science subjects.

Immediately after graduation from the University of Berlin in 1899, he was appointed an assistant at the Institute of Chemistry at the same university.

He progressed very fast through the ranks and soon became a lecturer in 1904 and was then promoted to professor in 1906.

In 1906 he discovered ‘carbon suboxide’ which is the anhydride acidic form of malonic acid. He found out the chemical composition and properties of this highly reactive substance. The information about its chemical structure helped him understand the composition of different carbon oxides.

In 1913 he was appointed the Head of the Department of chemistry at the Berlin University and became a full professor in 1915.

He was appointed as an associate professor at the Chemical Institute of the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University in Kiel in 1914.

Otto Diels authored and published his work ‘Einfuhrung in die organische Chemie’ in 1907 which had nineteen editions by 1962. It is one of the most popular textbooks in the field of organic chemistry.

His papers were published in many scientific journals and magazines including the periodical ‘Liebigs Annalen der Chemie’.