File:Charles-Adolphe_Wurtz.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1817-11-26 ) 26 November 1817, Wolfisheim , near Strasbourg , France
- Died
- 10 May 1884 (1884-05-10) (aged 66), Paris , France
- Alma mater
- University of Strasbourg
- Known for
- Wurtz reaction
- Awards
- Faraday Lectureship Prize (1879) , Copley Medal (1881)
- Fields
- Chemistry
- Doctoral advisor
- Amédée Cailliot
- Other academic advisors
- Justus von Liebig
- Doctoral students
- Charles Friedel , Armand Gautier
- Other notable students
- Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff , Alexander Zaytsev
via Wikipedia infobox
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Charles Adolphe Wurtz ( French: [vyʁts]; 26 November 1817 – 10 May 1884) was an Alsatian French chemist. He is best remembered for his decades-long advocacy for the atomic theory and for ideas about the structures of chemical compounds, against the skeptical opinions of chemists such as Marcellin Berthelot and Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville. He is well known by organic chemists for the Wurtz reaction, to form carbon-carbon bonds by reacting alkyl halides with sodium, and for his discoveries of ethylamine, ethylene glycol, and the aldol reaction. Wurtz was also an influential writer and educator.
Life
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q366051” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.