Otto Wallach 1910 58

Otto Wallach 1910 58

Otto Wallach’s father was a resident of the Prussian town of Konigsberg. This is where Otto was born on 27th March 1847. His family became Lutherans after conversion from Judaism. His father reached such heights in public service and rose to the position of Auditor General while working in Potsdam. His family, however, moved to Potsdam from Stettin after moving there from Konigsberg after Otto was born. Otto started school at the humanistic Gymnasium in Potsdam although there were hardly subjects taken in the sciences. While schooling here, Otto took classes in the Arts, incorporating literature and history.

I N Otto Wallach, German chemistry loses one of its organic pillars. He is almost the last to go of a great generation which believed in the serious study of at the laboratory bench as the prime and proper occupation of the chemist and could express itself in plain, straightforward, honest language, free from illusions and pretence. The split p and the proton leaning-post have changed all that : the beginner no longer learns even to determine the molecular weight of oxygen, although he is prepared to discuss the ‘in’ards’ of its atoms ; analysis is a meaningless word to him ; he is not really to be trusted to analyse anything, either by word or deed. What was a moral science is fast becoming mere superstition to the majority. The example of a craftsman like Wallach is therefore of special value. Devoting himself to the study of one of the great groups of plant products, the essential oils, he developed consummate analytical skill in unravelling Nature’s most tangled mixtures, thus laying not only foundations for the future study of vital products but also contributing largely to the development of a most remunerative industry.

The first foundations of terpene chemistry were laid in France, especially by Berthelot. Gladstone and Wright were early in the field here but did not get very far. In the early ‘seventies, Tilden and I began to revise and extend the French work but the real cause of advance was Tilden’s brilliant discovery of the beautifully crystalline nitrosochlorides and nitroso-derivatives of (pinene) and citrene. We were early convinced that the number of isomeric hydrocarbons had been greatly exaggerated. Wallach began by studying wormseed oil but soon passed into our field-without ever asking our permission, although those were days when not all were pirates as now. He scored his first real success in working with Tilden’s compounds. It was therefore amusing when, in 1890, in a paper in the Annalen he practically accused me of having picked his brains when I had visited his laboratory shortly before. This was in connexion with sobrerol. As a matter of fact, I had been collecting the material a dozen years previously: it was in this work that Sir William Pope’s crystallographic genius first became apparent.

If we ask why Tilden, who made so brilliant a beginning, did so little afterwards, whilst Wallach who had trod in his footsteps did so much, the answer is that in 1880 Tilden became the head of a new school (Mason College) and had ‘ fish to fry ‘ more important than essential oils. Wallach had not a few helpers, under the German university system. The last thing Birmingham cared for then was research. Tilden had scarce a student to work with him: his men were under no Ph.D. compulsion to attempt original work. I was in a like position and, at about the time Wallach began, had three new laboratories on my hands in rapid succession. Still we kept the camphor pot boiling usefully, so that an English camphor school gradually arose ; this began by doubting Kekule. Perkin junior’s synthetic terpene work stands unrivalled. Later English workers in the field have given proof that there are still craftsmen among us. Maybe, ere long we shall have to show that not a few of the conclusions of the Wallach school are unsound.

Wallach was able to accomplish his work because he was under conditions which were the outcome of centuries of loving care for the universities and a public belief in the value of education. Here, fifty to sixty years ago, even Oxford and Cambridge were scarce known to natural science. Cambridge came fairly rapidly to the fore but Oxford was slower. Meanwhile schools of university rank have been established in every considerable town in the country ; perhaps some of us who have contributed to this end may prove to have done work of far more value than that on essential oils.

Otto Wallach was a German chemist born in the Kingdom of Prussia in the middle of nineteenth century. He received the 1910 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on alicyclic compounds. Educated at a gymnasium, which laid more stress on humanities than science, he started experimenting on different chemical reactions at home. Ultimately, he graduated from the University of Göttingen with chemistry and received his PhD from there at the age of twenty-two. At the age of twenty-three, he joined the University of Bonn as a Lecturer of Pharmacy; but soon was drafted into the Franco Prussian War of 1870. After the war he first tried to settle in Berlin, but circumstances were such that he had to rejoin the University of Bonn for the second time. It was at this phase that his mentor, Friedrich August Kekulé, came across an old and forgotten cupboard full of essential oils and asked him to investigate on them. Thus he began a long and detailed experimentation. Among other things, it led to the discovery of terpene and established the foundation of modern perfume industry.

Otto Wallach was however self-taught in the sciences and chemistry. By the time he was due for the university; Otto Wallach had proceeded to the University of Gottingen in 1865 but soon left for Berlin. He served as understudy to G. Magnus and A.W. Hoffman but only waited for a semester before returning to Gottingen. Otto was awarded a doctorate after research and studies for five semesters.

When1870 dawned, Otto Wallach was due for military service, and this was during the war with France in which they were pitted against the Prussians. When the war ended, Otto made his way back to work in a production firm. However, the chemicals that littered the premises were hazardous to Otto’s fragile health, and he had to resign. Otto found himself again in the academic environment when he relocated to the University of Boon from Berlin. This was in 1872, and Otto persevered and immersed himself in research here for the next decade. He became a Professor Extraordinary after four years, and this was a testament to his scholarly contributions. When the school’s Pharmacology Chair became vacant in 1879, Otto he was obligated to fill the void. This led to his specialization in the field of pharmacology. This was how he uncovered reaction of phosphorus pentachloride when exposed to acid amides. Otto’s innovation led to the discovery of imino chloride.

Through his contributions on derivatization and structural elucidation Otto Wallach revolutionized terpene chemistry. His research in this area, begun in 1884, earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry a hundred years ago.

Otto Wallach’s focus on a few abandoned bottles left in the research cupboard which contained essential oils was how he chanced upon a new field of work. He immersed himself in researching these over the next decade, and it became his focal work of research. Otto’s commitment and research were exemplary, and he exuded distinction as an outcome.

Terpenes are a large and varied group of hydrocarbon compounds that exist in many fragrant substances in nature, including turpentine and other essential oils. In the 1880s Otto Wallach surveyed such substances and developed methods for extracting different terpenes from mixtures. He showed that many substances were mixtures of a small number of terpenes and that terpenes can easily be altered and change into each other. Wallach’s work became significant within the chemical industry, where essential oils are used in perfume and food.

He died on 26 February 1931, and was buried in the Gottingen.