August Freund (30 July 1835 – 28 February 1892) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n chemist who in 1881 first synthesised

cyclopropane Cyclopropane is the cycloalkane with the molecular formula (CH2)3, consisting of three methylene groups (CH2) linked to each other to form a triangular ring. The small size of the ring creates substantial ring strain in the structure. Cyclopropane ...

. Freund was born in 1835 in the town of

Kęty Kęty is a town in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland with 18,955 inhabitants (2012). The town located in Silesian Foothills dates its earliest document from 1277 when Polish prince of Opole Władysław confirmed sale of the se ...

, Austria-Hungary. (The town now lies in Poland.) After graduating from the gymnasium (an advanced secondary school) in

Cieszyn Cieszyn ( , ; ; ) is a border town in southern Poland on the east bank of the Olza River, and the administrative seat of Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship. The town has 33,500 inhabitants ( and lies opposite Český Těšín in the Czech Repu ...

(then in Austria-Hungary, now on the Polish border with the Czech Republic), he studied pharmacy in

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

(then in Austria-Hungary, now in Ukraine) and then in Leipzig, Germany. After studying at Lviv University from 1856-1858, he received a master's degree in pharmacy. He then assisted professor Leopold von Pebal in his investigations of petroleum. By 1861, he was teaching at a gymnasium in

Ternopil Ternopil, known until 1944 mostly as Tarnopol, is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Western Ukraine and the historical regions of Galicia and Podolia. The populatio ...

(then in Austria-Hungary, now in Ukraine). By 1869, he was appointed a professor at the

realschule Real school (, ) is a type of secondary school in Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia (''realna gimnazija''), the Austrian Empire, the German Empire, Denmark and Norway (''realskole''), Sweden (''realskola''), F ...

(secondary school) in Lviv. He then began working towards a doctoral degree, receiving a doctorate from Leipzig University in 1871. In 1872, he became a professor of chemistry at the Lviv Technical University. There he investigated fermentation, petroleum, and

ketone In organic chemistry, a ketone is an organic compound with the structure , where R and R' can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group (a carbon-oxygen double bond C=O). The simplest ketone is acetone ( ...

s — among other subjects. He became dean of the Department of General and Analytical Chemistry, and from 1878, dean of the Department of Technical Chemistry. He was elected rector of the Polytechnic three times. In 1881 he discovered a method for synthesising cyclopropane: he treated 1,3 - dibromopropane with sodium metal. The method now bears his name. He was able to synthesise enough cyclopropane to do several chemical reactions and derive from the results the three-membered ring structure of cyclopropane. He died in Lviv in 1892.A brief notice of Freund's death appeared in: ''Chemiker Zeitung'', 16 (105) :
1975
(December 31, 1892).

Selected writings

* August Freund (1861
"Beiträge zur Kenntniss der phenylschwefligen und der Phenylschwefelsäure"
(Contributions to our knowledge of phenylsulfurous and phenylsulfuric acids), ''Annalen der Chemie'', 120 (1) : 76–89. * August Freund (1861
"Ueber die Natur der Ketone"
(On the nature of ketones), ''Journal für praktische Chemie'', 82 (1) : 214-231. * August Freund, ''Zarys chemii do użytku szkół gimnazyalnych'' utline of chemistry for use in gymnasiums(Lviv, Austria-Hungary: I. Zwiazkowa, 1883) n Polish

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freund, August 19th-century Austrian people 19th-century Austrian chemists Chemists from Austria-Hungary Jewish chemists People from Oświęcim County Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) Lviv Polytechnic rectors 1835 births 1892 deaths