Emil Fischer
Hermann Emil Louis Fischer
Born	(1852-10-09)9 October 1852 Euskirchen, Germany
Died	15 July 1919(1919-07-15) (aged 66) Berlin, Germany Suicide
Nationality	Germany
Fields	Chemistry
Institutions	University of Munich (1875–81) University of Erlangen (1881–88) University of Würzburg (1888–92) University of Berlin (1892–1919)
Alma mater	University of Bonn University of Strasbourg
Doctoral advisor	Adolf von Baeyer
Doctoral students	Alfred Stock Otto Diels Otto Ruff Walter A. Jacobs Ludwig Knorr Oskar Piloty Julius Tafel
Known for	Study of sugars & purines
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1902) Elliott Cresson Medal (1913)

Hermann Emil Fischer, Emil Fischer (9 October 1852, Euskirchen, Rhine Province – 15 July 1919) was a German chemist and 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Fischer was born in Euskirchen, near Cologne, the son of a businessman. After graduating he wished to study natural sciences, but his father compelled him to work in the family business until determining that his son was unsuitable. Fischer then attended the University of Bonn in 1872, but switched to the University of Strasbourg in 1872. He earned his doctorate in 1874 with his study of phthalein and was appointed to a position at the university.

Academic career[link]

In 1875 von Baeyer was asked to succeed Liebig at the University of Munich and Fischer went there with him to become an assistant in organic chemistry.

In 1878 Fischer qualified as a Privatdozent at Munich, where he was appointed Associate Professor of Analytical Chemistry in 1879. In the same year he was offered, but refused, the Chair of Chemistry at Aachen.

In 1881 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the University of Erlangen and in 1883 he was asked by the Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik to direct its scientific laboratory. Fischer, however, whose father had now made him financially independent, preferred academic work.

In 1885 he was asked to become Professor of Chemistry at the University of Würzburg and here he remained until 1892, when he was asked to succeed A. W. Hofmann in the Chair of Chemistry at the University of Berlin. Here he remained until his death in 1919.

Research work[link]

Fischer's early discovery of phenylhydrazine and its influence on his later work have already been mentioned. While he was at Munich, Fischer continued to work on the hydrazines and, working there with his cousin Otto Fischer, who had followed him to Munich, he and Otto worked out a new theory of the constitution of the dyes derived from triphenylmethane, proving this by experimental work to be correct.

At Erlangen, Fischer studied the active principles of tea, coffee and cocoa, namely, caffeine and theobromine, and established the constitution of a series of compounds in this field, eventually synthesizing them.

The work, however, on which Fischer's fame chiefly rests, was his studies of the purines and the sugars. This work, carried out between 1882 and 1906 showed that various substances, little known at that time, such as adenine, xanthine, in vegetable substances, caffeine and, in animal excrement, uric acid and guanine, all belonged to one homogeneous family and could be derived from one another and that they corresponded to different hydroxyl and amino derivatives of the same fundamental system formed by a bicyclic nitrogenous structure into which the characteristic urea group entered. This parent substance, which at first he regarded as being hypothetical, he called purine in 1884, and he synthesized it in 1898. Numerous artificial derivatives, more or less analogous to the naturally-occurring substances, came from his laboratory between 1882 and 1896.

In 1884 Fischer began his great work on the sugars, which transformed the knowledge of these compounds and welded the new knowledge obtained into a coherent whole. Even before 1880 the aldehyde formula of glucose had been indicated, but Fischer established it by a series of transformations such as oxidation into aldonic acid and the action of phenylhydrazine which he had discovered and which made possible the formation of the phenylhydrazones and the osazones. By passage to a common osazone, he established the relation between glucose, fructose and mannose, which he discovered in 1888. In 1890, by epimerization between gluconic and mannonic acids, he established the stereochemical and isomeric nature of the sugars, and between 1891 and 1894 he established the stereochemical configuration of all the known sugars and exactly foretold the possible isomers, by an ingenious application of the theory of the asymmetrical carbon atom of Van't Hoff and Le Bel, published in 1874. Reciprocal syntheses between different hexoses by isomerization and then between pentoses, hexoses, and heptoses by reaction of degradation and synthesis proved the value of the systematics he had established. His greatest success was his synthesis of glucose, fructose and mannose in 1890, starting from glycerol.

This monumental work on the sugars, carried out between 1884 and 1894, was extended by other work, the most important being his studies of the glucosides.

Between 1899 and 1908 Fischer made his great contributions to knowledge of the proteins. He sought effective analytical methods of separating and identifying the individual amino acids, discovering a new type, the cyclic amino acids: proline and hydroxyproline. He also studied the synthesis of proteins by obtaining the various amino acids in an optically active form in order to unite them. He was able to establish the type of bond that would connect them together in chains, namely, the peptide bond, and by means of this he obtained the dipeptides and later the tripeptides and polypeptides. In 1901 he discovered, in collaboration with Ernest Fourneau, the synthesis of the dipeptide, glycylglycine, and in that year he also published his work on the hydrolysis of casein. Amino acids occurring in nature were prepared in the laboratory and new ones were discovered. His synthesis of the oligopeptides culminated in an octodecapeptide, which had many characteristics of natural proteins. This and his subsequent work led to a better understanding of the proteins and laid the foundations for later studies of them.

In addition to his work in the fields already mentioned, Fischer also studied the enzymes and the chemical substances in the lichens which he found during his frequent holidays in the Black Forest, and also substances used in tanning and, during the final years of his life, the fats. In 1890, he also proposed a "Lock and Key Model" to visualize the substrate and enzyme interaction. Though, later studies did not support this model in all enzymatic reactions.

Fischer is noted for his work on sugars among other work the organic synthesis of (+) glucose^[1] and purines (including the first synthesis of caffeine).

Personal life[link]

At the age of 18, before he went to the University of Bonn, Fischer suffered from gastritis, which attacked him again towards the end of his tenure of the Chair at Erlangen and caused him to refuse a tempting offer to follow Victor Meyer at the Federal Technical University at Zurich and to take a year's leave of absence before he went, in 1888, to Würzburg. Throughout his life he was well served by his excellent memory, which enabled him, although he was not a naturally good speaker, to memorize manuscripts of lectures that he had written.

He was particularly happy at Würzburg where he enjoyed walks among the hills and he also made frequent visits to the Black Forest. His administrative work, especially when he went to Berlin, revealed him as a tenacious campaigner for the establishment of scientific foundations, not only in chemistry, but in other fields of work as well. His keen understanding of scientific problems, his intuition and love of truth and his insistence on experimental proof of hypotheses, marked him as one of the truly great scientists of all time.

In 1888 Fischer married Agnes Gerlach, daughter of Joseph von Gerlach, Professor of Anatomy at Erlangen. His wife died seven years after their marriage. They had three sons, one of whom was killed in World War I; another committed suicide at the age of 25 as a result of compulsory military training. In 1919 in Berlin, Fischer, like his son, committed suicide.^[2][3] The oldest son,^[4] Hermann Otto Laurenz Fischer, was Professor of Biochemistry in the University of California at Berkeley from 1948 until his death in 1960.

Honours, awards, and legacy[link]

Fischer was made a Prussian Geheimrat (Excellenz), and held honorary doctorates of the Universities of Christiania, Cambridge (England), Manchester and Brussels. He was also awarded the Prussian Order of Merit and the Maximilian Order for Arts and Sciences. In 1902 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on sugar and purine synthesis.

Many names of chemical reactions and concepts are named after him:

• Fischer indole synthesis
• Fischer projection
• Fischer oxazole synthesis
• Fischer peptide synthesis
• Fischer phenylhydrazine and oxazone reaction
• Fischer reduction
• Fischer-Speier esterification
• Fischer glycosidation

When Fischer died in 1919, the Emil Fischer Memorial Medal was instituted by the German Chemical Society.

Note that the Fischer-Tropsch process is named after Franz Emil Fischer a chemist who was no relation, head of the Institut fuer Kohlenforschung in Muelheim.

See also[link]

• List of chemists

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Nobel Lecture Syntheses in the Purine and Sugar Group from Nobelprize.org website
• Biography Biography from Nobelprize.org website
• Eminent Chemists of Our Time By Benjamin Harrow pages 216–239, published 1920 by Von Nostrand Company at books.google.com.
• Guide to the Emil Fischer Papers at The Bancroft Library
• Text-book of Physiological Chemistry in Thirty Lectures by Emil Abderhalden, translated by William Thomas Hall and George Defren; published 1908 by Wiley Company, has many technical references to Fischer's work in Chemistry.
• American Journal of Diseases of Children 1911 volume 2 by the American Medical Association also refers to Fischer's work.
• An Introduction to the History of Medicine: With Medical Chronology by Fielding Hudson Garrison‎, page 708 refers to Fischer and Merings discovery of the drugs veronal(1904) and proponal(1905), published 1921 by Saunders Company.
• 1914 Year Book of the American Pharmaceutical Association, page 438 abstracts Fischer and Strauss's work on Phenol-Glucosides – Synthetic Production from Berlin d.D Chem. Germany, page 45(1912) No. 12.
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "Fischer, Emil". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 
  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fischer, Emil". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
  • "Fischer, Emil". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. 

Emil Fischer may refer to:

• Emil Fischer (bass) (1838–1914), German dramatic basso
• Franz Joseph Emil Fischer (1877–1947), German chemist, worked with oil and coal
• Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919), German Nobel laureate in chemistry

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Carl Zeiss
Carl Zeiss
Born	(1816-09-11)11 September 1816 Weimar, Germany
Died	3 December 1888(1888-12-03) (aged 72) Jena, Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Optics
Institutions	Carl Zeiss AG
Alma mater	University of Jena
Known for	Optical Lenses

Large microscope by Carl Zeiss (1879)

Carl Zeiss (11 September 1816 – 3 December 1888) was a German maker of optical instruments commonly known for the company he founded, Carl Zeiss Jena (now: Carl Zeiss AG). Zeiss made contributions to lens manufacturing that have aided the modern production of lenses. Raised in Weimar, Germany, he became a notable lens-maker in the 1840s when he created high-quality lenses that were "wide open", or in other words, had a very large aperture range that allowed for very bright images. He did this in the city of Jena at a self-opened workshop, where he started his lens-making career. At first his lenses were only used in the production of microscopes, but when cameras were invented, his company began manufacturing high-quality lenses for cameras.

Youth[link]

Zeiss began his life in pre-imperial Germany where he went to a grammar school, and undertook apprenticeship under Dr. Friedrich Körner, mechanic and supplier to the court. He later attended lectures in mathematics, experimental physics, anthropology, mineralogy and optics at the University of Jena. After seven years he opened a small workshop with hardly any tools. He made many lenses but had little recognition until 1847 when he hired his second and third apprentice.

Life[link]

In 1847 Carl Zeiss started making microscopes full-time. His first innovation was simpler single-lens microscopes intended for dissecting work. He sold 23 of them during the first year of production. Zeiss decided he needed a new challenge, so he began making compound microscopes. He created the Stand I which went to market in 1857.

In 1861 he was awarded a gold medal at the Thuringian Industrial Exhibition for his designs. They were considered to be among the best scientific instruments in Germany. By this point, he had about twenty people working for him and an expanding business. In 1866 the Zeiss workshop sold their thousandth microscope.

In 1872, he joined up with physicist Ernst Abbe. Their combined efforts lead to the discovery of the Abbe sine condition. Theoretically, the Abbe sine condition could greatly improve how well lenses could be made. However, a form of glass strong enough to fully test the theory did not exist at the time. Abbe then met Otto Schott, a thirty-year-old glass chemist who had just received his doctorate. They collaborated and in 1886, produced a new type of glass that could fully use the Abbe sine condition. This new type of glass made possible a new class of microscope objective, the apochromatic (often abbreviated 'apo'). Zeiss used water immersion to form a compensating eyepiece which produced images with little or no color distortion.

Zeiss's son had entered the business with him, but retired soon after Zeiss's death of natural causes on 3 December 1888. The business was incorporated as the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung in 1889. It gained an international reputation for the manufacture of optical instruments of all kinds, and remains in business to this day, where the company might be most known for its broad selection of optical scopes and binoculars.

Publications[link]

• Auerbach, Das Zeisswerk und die Carl Zeiss-Stiftung in Jena (third edition, Jena, 1907)

See also[link]

• Calculation of glass properties - a significant contribution to the success of the companies Zeiss and Schott
• Optical Museum Jena

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Carl Zeiss

• Carl Zeiss Biography
• Zeiss Company History Site
• Zeiss microscopes resource site
• First simple microscope made by Carl Zeiss in 1847/1848
• Early compound microscope made by Carl Zeiss

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2011)

Hermann Prey (11 July 1929 – 22 July 1998) was a German lyric baritone, best known for his lieder renditions and for light comic roles in opera.

Biography[link]

Hermann Prey was born in Berlin and grew up in Germany. He was scheduled to be drafted when World War II ended. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and won the prize of the Frankfurt contest of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1952.

He began to sing in song recitals and made his operatic debut the next year in Wiesbaden. He joined the Staatsoper, where he sang until 1960. During his last years in Hamburg, he also made frequent guest appearances elsewhere, including the Salzburg Festival.

He sang frequently at the Metropolitan Opera between 1960 and 1970 and made his Bayreuth debut in 1965. Although he often sang Verdi early in his career, he later concentrated more on Mozart and Richard Strauss. Prey was well known for playing Figaro (Mozart and Rossini), but he played other Mozart roles at least equally often, particularly Papageno and Guglielmo. He also played, and recorded, the Count in The Marriage of Figaro. He is regarded by many as the best Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus operetta.

He was at home with comic opera Italian-style, displaying scenic intelligence, liveliness and hilarity. His virtuoso agility and great comic acting made him an obvious choice for numerous productions of Mozart's and Rossini's operas in the 1970s. In 1972 he performed as Figaro in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's television film of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Teresa Berganza as Rosina, Luigi Alva as Almaviva and conductor Claudio Abbado. He appeared alongside Fritz Wunderlich in the live televised version of Il Barbiere di Siviglia in its German translation, Der Barbier von Sevilla. He also portrayed Figaro in 1976 in Ponnelle's film of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

Prey also sang operetta and performed on German television, becoming extremely popular with television audiences. He shared media-celebrity with Fritz Wunderlich until the latter's untimely death, often playing Papageno to Wunderlich's Tamino.

He is best remembered for his recitals, his first American recital having been given in 1956. He was a gifted interpreter of Schubert, as well as other Lieder (together with the German pianist Sebastian Peschko). He also appeared frequently in concert, particularly in the Bach Passions and Brahms' A German Requiem. A videotaped performance of Schubert's lieder-cycle Schwanengesang is available.

Prey possessed a clear, polished tone - darker and deeper-sounding than his slightly older contemporary Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but equally refined and equally capable of soaring into the tenor range without the smallest suggestion of vocal effort.

He recorded a multi-volume set for Phillips, tracing the history of the Lied from the Minnesänger to the twentieth century. In addition, he released numerous recordings of opera and song.

Unlike Fischer-Dieskau, Prey wisely limited his Wagner to the soft, high-baritone roles Wolfram and Beckmesser. He can be seen on video in the latter role, opposite Bernd Weikl.

Starting in 1982, he taught at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, and he wrote an autobiography which was translated as First Night Fever (ISBN 0-7145-3998-8).

In 1988, he directed a production of The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg. His son Florian is also a baritone.

He died in Krailling, Bavaria.

For many years, Michael Endres was the pianist to Hermann Prey.

References[link]

• Fritz Wunderlich's Colleagues: Hermann Prey
• Prey - Stille meine Liebe: documentary DVD about Hermann Prey

External links[link]

• Interview with Hermann Prey by Bruce Duffie, October 12, 1985

For the footballer with the same name, see Karl Engel (Footballer)

Karl Engel (Birsfelden, June 1, 1923 - Chernex, September 2, 2006) was a Swiss pianist.

In 1952 Engel was awarded the second prize at the Queen Elisabeth competition. Throughout his concert career he cultivated the art song repertory and worked extensively on works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann. He also held a professorship at Hannover's Musihochschule for three decades.

Swiss pianist Karl (Rudolf) Engel, was a student of Paul Baumgartner at the Basel Conservatory from 1942 to 1945. After World War II he studied with Alfred Cortot at the École Normale de Musique in Paris in 1947-1948. In 1952 he won 2nd prize at the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition in Brussels.

Karl Engel toured internationally as a soloist with orchestras, a recitalist and a chamber music performer. He became particularly known for his complete cycles of Mozart piano sonatas and concertos, and the Beethoven piano sonatas. His performances of complete piano works of Robert Schumann during the 1970s were highly estimated. He also distinguished himself as an accompanist, often appearing in Lieder recitals with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hermann Prey, Peter Schreier and Brigitte Fassbaender. Among his chamber music partners were the cellist Pablo Casals and the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the Melos Quartet.

From 1958 to 1986 Karl Engel was Professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, Germany. He led famous master-classes in France, Canada and Portugal.Since 1989 he led master-classes in his homeland and abroad.

Son: Till Engel, pianist, Professor at Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, West-Germany

Karl Engel recorded the complete piano music of Mozart and of Robert Schumann and a lot of recordings with the singers Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Herman Prey, Brigitte Fassbaender., Peter Schreier.

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