Kurt Alder
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Kurt Alder
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1950
Born: 10 July 1902, Königshütte, Prussia (now Chorzów, Poland)
Died: 20 June 1958, Cologne, West Germany (now Germany)
Affiliation at the time of the award: Cologne University, Cologne, Germany
Prize motivation: “for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
The element carbon is the component in a large and varied family of chemical compounds—organic compounds. Diens are compounds of carbon and hydrogen that contain two double bonds, i.e., where two carbon atoms share two pairs of paired electrons. In 1928 Kurt Alder and Otto Diels discovered a reaction in which one dien was changed into a ring-shaped molecule with six carbon atoms. The reaction became very significant within the chemical industry. For example, it served as a link in the production of plastic and synthetic rubber.
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