Otto Ruff (30 December 1871 – 17 September 1939) was a German

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

Life

Otto Ruff was born in Schwäbisch Hall,

Württemberg Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart. Together with Baden and Province of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern, two other histo ...

. After becoming a

pharmacist A pharmacist, also known as a chemist in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English, is a healthcare professional who is knowledgeable about preparation, mechanism of action, clinical usage and legislation of medications in ...

under the supervision of Carl Magnus von Hell (known from the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation) at the University of Stuttgart he joined the group of

Hermann Emil Fischer Hermann Emil Louis Fischer (; 9 October 1852 – 15 July 1919) was a German chemist and List of Nobel laureates in Chemistry, 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He also developed the Fisch ...

at the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

. Fischer was noted for his work on

carbohydrates A carbohydrate () is a biomolecule composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The typical hydrogen-to-oxygen atomic ratio is 2:1, analogous to that of water, and is represented by the empirical formula (where ''m'' and ''n'' ma ...

(sugars) and so Ruff started his career as an organic chemist. In 1898 he published his work on the transformation of d-Glucose to d-Arabinose, later called the

Ruff degradation Ruff degradation is a reaction used to shorten the open chain forms of monosaccharides. It is functionally the reverse reaction of Kiliani-Fischer synthesis. In 1898, Otto Ruff published his work on the transformation of D-Glucose to D-Arabinose la ...

. Supported by the far-sighted Fischer, who recognized that while organic chemistry was now mature, physical chemistry was growing rapidly, Ruff became head of the new inorganic department in Berlin, working alongside Alfred Stock who was five years his junior. This drastic change in subject benefited Ruff during his work on chlorides sulfur compounds. In 1902 he married Meta Richter, a pharmacist, and from this marriage he had three children. In 1904 he became a professor at the Technical University of Danzig and from 1916 onward he was head of the inorganic chemistry department at the Technical University of Breslau. He died three years after his retirement in 1939. His last years of teaching were made miserable by a privatdozent and assistant, Helmut Hartmann, who had joined the Nazi party and became an "insolent politician" who made life unbearable for many. Prof

Scientific achievements

Otto Ruff published 290 papers and two books. The books were: "The Chemistry of Fluorine" (published in 1920 by Springer Verlag, Berlin) and "Introduction to Chemical Practicum" (Leipzig 1926, 2nd edition 1937). His papers can be categorized as follows: chemistry of sugars (17 papers), inorganic chemistry of fluorine (86), high temperature chemistry (44), electrolysis of molten salts (9), plastics (10), carbides (20), explosions in mines (7), other fields of inorganic chemistry (72). Website of the Technical University of Gdansk, http://www.kchn.pg.gda.pl/?p=history&lng=en Along with

Svante Arrhenius Svante August Arrhenius ( , ; 19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a Swedish scientist. Originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. In 1903, he received ...

, Henri Moissan, and

Alfred Werner Alfred Werner (12 December 1866 – 15 November 1919) was a Swiss chemist who was a student at ETH Zurich and a professor at the University of Zurich. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for proposing the octahedral configuration ...

, all of whom received Nobel Prizes, O. Ruff was regarded as the driver of the achievements of inorganic chemistry in first decades of the 20th century.

References

New link to Website of the Gdansk University of Technology (previously Technical University of Gdańsk): https://chem.pg.edu.pl/kchn/otto-ruff-en

Literature

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ruff, Otto 1871 births 1939 deaths People from Schwäbisch Hall 20th-century German chemists Academic staff of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology

Life

Scientific achievements

See also

References

Literature