Diels, Otto Paul Hermann

▪ German chemist

born Jan. 23, 1876, Hamburg, Ger.

died March 7, 1954, Kiel, W.Ger.

      German organic chemist who with Kurt Alder was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1950 for their joint work in developing a method of preparing cyclic organic compounds.

      Diels studied chemistry at the University of Berlin under Emil Fischer and after various appointments was made professor of chemistry at the University of Kiel (1916). He became emeritus in 1945.

      In 1906 Diels discovered a highly reactive substance, carbon suboxide (the acid anhydride of malonic acid), and determined its properties and chemical composition. He also devised an easily controlled method of removing some of the hydrogen atoms from certain organic molecules by the use of metallic selenium.

      His most important work concerned the diene synthesis, in which organic compounds with two carbon-to-carbon double bonds were used to effect syntheses of many cyclic organic substances under conditions that threw light on the molecular structure of the products obtained. This method was developed (1928) in collaboration with Kurt Alder (Alder, Kurt), his student, and is known as the Diels-Alder reaction. Their work proved especially important in the production of synthetic rubber and plastics.

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