PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE 172
Richard Willstätter
Born into a Jewish family in Karlsruhe (in Baden) on August 13, 1872, Richard Martin Willstätter was the son of Max Willstätter (a textile merchant) and Sophie (née Ulmann). He first attended school at the Karlsruhe Gymnasium and then the technical school at Nuremberg.
THE PROMISING CHEMIST
At age eighteen, Willstätter began studying science at the University of Munich… where he stayed for the next fifteen years. Willstätter was in the Department of Chemistry under Adolf von Baeyer. He was first a student of Alfred Einhorn, then as a faculty member. In 1894, Willstätter wrote his doctoral thesis was on the structure of cocaine. He continued his research into other alkaloids… synthesizing several of them. In 1896, Willstätter was named Lecturer… and then in 1902, he was named Professor Extraordinarius (professor without a chair), succeeding J. Thiele.
Three years later (in the summer of 1905), Willstätter left Munich to become professor at the Federal Technical College at Zürich. He worked on the plant pigment chlorophyll and first determined its empirical formula.
The years in Switzerland were for Willstätter the best and most significant. But while research and teaching brought him great satisfaction, Willstätter simultaneously suffered personal misfortune and loneliness. Nevertheless, he thoroughly enjoyed his work in Zurich.
Then in 1912, Willstätter returned to Germany to take on the role of professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin. He was also named director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. He took residence in the Dahlem neighborhood near fellow scientists.
While in the capital city of the German Empire, Willstätter studied the pigment structure of flowers and fruits. It was also in Berlin that Willstätter showed that chlorophyll was a mixture of two compounds: Chlorophylls A and B. His work was soon rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1915.
THE WAR AGAINST GAS
With the Great War raging across Europe, Fritz Haber asked Willstätter to join him in the development of poison gases in 1915. But Willstätter would not work on poisons. However, he agreed to work on improved protection against poison gases.
Soon, Willstätter and his team developed a three-layer filter that absorbed all types of poison gas used by the enemy. Thirty million units were manufactured by 1917. For his contribution, Willstätter was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class.
In 1916, Willstätter returned to the University of Munich as the successor to his mentor Baeyer. He wanted to take an active part in teaching… for with the tide of war ebbing for the Germans, even the tenor of scientific life at Dahlem was gone.
DEATH OF A SCIENTIST
During the 1920s, Willstätter investigated the mechanisms of enzyme reactions. He did much to establish that enzymes are chemical substances, not biological organisms. However, Willstätter (to the end of his life) refused to accept that enzymes were proteins.
Sadly in 1924, Richard Willstätter’s career came to end when he announced his retirement “as a gesture against increasing anti-Semitism”. According to his Nobel biography:
“Expressions of confidence by the Faculty, by his students and by the Minister failed to shake the fifty-three year old scientist in his decision to resign. He lived on in retirement in Munich, maintaining contact only with those of his pupils who remained in the Institute and with his successor, Heinrich Wieland, whom he had nominated. Dazzling offers both at home and abroad were alike rejected by him.”
Willstätter’s only research was with assistants who telephoned their results. He finally left Germany for good in 1938, emigrating to Switzerland the following year. Willstätter spent the remainder of his life in Muralto (near Locarno) writing his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben (From My Life).
Richard Willstätter died of a heart attack in Muralto on August 3, 1942… only ten days shy of his 70th birthday.