Albert Ladenburg was a German chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

.

Biography

Ladenburg was a member of a well known Jewish family in Mannheim. He was educated at a Realgymnasium at Mannheim

Mannheim

Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....

 and then, after the age of 15, at the technical school of Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, where he studied mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 and modern languages. He then proceeded to the University of Heidelberg where he studied Chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 and Physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 with Robert Bunsen

Robert Bunsen

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium and rubidium with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic...

. He also studied physics in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. He got his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in Heidelberg.

In Ghent

Ghent

Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

, Ladenburg worked for 6 months with Kekulé

Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz

Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, Kekule was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry...

 who introduced him to structural theory

Structural theory

In physics, structural theory explains the large variety in chemical compounds in terms of atoms making up molecules, the order in which atoms are put together in molecules and the electrons that hold them together...

. They worked on the structure of Benzene

Benzene

Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....

. Ladenburg's theory that benzene was a prismatic molecule turned out to be wrong. His proposed structure was eventually realised in 1973 in the molecule prismane

Prismane

Prismane is a polycyclic hydrocarbon with the formula C6H6. It is an isomer of benzene, more specific: a valence isomer. Prismane is far less stable than benzene. The carbon atoms of the prismane molecule are arranged in the shape of a six-atom triangular prism. Albert Ladenburg proposed this...

.

Ladenburg visited England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and then went on to work for 18 months in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 with Charles-Adolphe Wurtz

Charles-Adolphe Wurtz

Adolphe Wurtz 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 Etienne Henri Sainte-Claire Deville...

 and Charles Friedel

Charles Friedel

Charles Friedel was a French chemist and mineralogist. A native of Strasbourg, France, he was a student of Louis Pasteur at the Sorbonne...

 on organosilicon

Organosilicon

Organosilicon compounds are organic compounds containing carbon silicon bonds. Organosilicon chemistry is the corresponding science exploring their properties and reactivity.Like carbon, the organically bound silicon is tetravalent and tetrahedral...

 compounds and tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

 compounds. He then returned to Heidelberg to teach.

In 1873, Ladenburg went to Kiel

University of Kiel

The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

 as professor of chemistry and director of the laboratory, remaining there until 1889 when he went to the University of Breslau in the same capacity. He was made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1886 and received the Hanbury Medal for original research in chemistry in 1889.

Ladenburg isolated hyoscine, also known as scopolamine for the first time in 1880.
In 1900 Ladenburg founded the Chemische Gesellschaft Breslau, which he managed until 1910.

Publications

• Entwicklungsgeschichte der Chemie von Lavoisier bis zur Gegenwart (History of the development of chemistry from Lavoisier to the present; 1868)
• Handwörterbuch der Chemie (Handy Dictionary of Chemistry; collaborator, 13 vols., 1882-96)
• Lebenserinnerungen (Reminiscences; 1912)