1910
Speed read: Essential chemical plants
Speed read
From apples to ylang-ylang, the range of scents and flavours that fill Nature’s vast garden of plants are formed chiefly from specific combinations of volatile organic compounds, known collectively as essential oils. For decades the tools used in chemistry were deemed ill-equipped to untangle these complex and unstable mixtures, until Otto Wallach devised ways in…
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Otto Wallach – Biographical
Biographical
Otto Wallach was born on March 27, 1847, in Königsberg, Germany, the son of Gerhard Wallach and his wife, née Otillie Thoma. His father was a high-ranking civil servant, who later became Auditor General at Potsdam. During his early school years at the humanistic “Gymnasium” at Potsdam, Wallach had a profound liking for history and…
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Paul Heyse – Biographical
Biographical
I was born in Berlin on March 15, 1830, the second son of the royal university professor K.W.L. Heyse and his wife Julie, née Saaling, who came from a Jewish family. After attending the Gymnasium between my eighth and seventeenth years, I studied classical philology at Berlin University for two years under Boeckh and Lachmann,…
moreJohannes Diderik van der Waals – Biographical
Biographical
Johannes Diderik van der Waals was born on November 23, 1837 in Leyden, The Netherlands, the son of Jacobus van der Waals and Elisabeth van den Burg. After having finished elementary education at his birthplace he became a schoolteacher. Although he had no knowledge of classical languages, and thus was not allowed to take academic…
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