Erich Clar (23 August 1902 – 27 March 1987) was a German

organic chemist Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...

, born in Hřensko (a village directly at the border of Germany and the Czech Republic; Czech: Hřensko, German: Herrnskretschen), who studied

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon A Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is any member of a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple fused aromatic rings. Most are produced by the incomplete combustion of organic matter— by engine exhaust fumes, tobacco, incine ...

chemistry. During world war II he had no participation and no party membership in the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers ...

and did research in his "Privatlabor Herrnskretschen" (private laboratory in Herrnskretschen/Hřensko) on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, esp. on the acenes. He is considered as the father of that field. In 1941, he authored "Aromatische Kohlenwasserstoffe" (Springer-Verlag) and in 1964 the greatly expanded two-volume ''Polycyclic Hydrocarbons'', which described the syntheses, properties, and UV-visible absorption spectra of hundreds of PAHs. He discovered the Clar reaction of the cyclic ketone perinaphthenone to form dibenzo d,lmerylene in a 400 °C melt of zinc dust, zinc (II) chloride, and sodium chloride. He created the Sextet Theory, now eponymously called '' Clar's rule'', to describe the behavior of

isomers. This was described in his book ''The Aromatic Sextet''. He was awarded the August Kekulé Medal by the Chemical Society of the GDR in 1965, the highest award given by that society to foreign scientists, and the first Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Research Award of the International Symposium on Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons in 1987. He died aged 84 in 1987 at Estepona.

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1902 births 1987 deaths 20th-century German chemists Organic chemists People from Děčín District TU Dresden alumni Academics of the University of Glasgow German emigrants to Scotland Sudeten German people {{chemist-stub

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