Martius, Carl

It consisted of Julius Holtz as treasurer, Emil Jacobsen and Otto Witt (who would collaborate on the humorous songs to be sung at the banquet), Carl Martius, Carl Scheibler, and Hermann Wichelhaus—all members of the executive committee of the DCG. The full report on the Benzolfest is Schultz, "Bericht" (1890). The celebration is also described in Anschutz, 1 615-41, and analyzed by Schiemenz, "Heretical Look," and by Rudofsky, "Benzolfest" (1993). 

Another important piece of the puzzle came from the work of Carl Martius and Franz Knoop, who showed that citric acid could be converted to isocitrate and then to a-ketoglutarate. This finding was significant because it was already known that a-ketoglutarate could be enzymatically oxidized to succinate. At this juncture, the pathway from citrate to oxaloacetate seemed to be as shown in Figure 20.3. Whereas the pathway made sense, the catalytic effect of succinate and the other dicarboxylic acids from Szent-Gyorgyi s studies remained a puzzle. 

At the turn of the century, the academic-industrial symbiosis still primarily consisted of its classical core, which had developed in the course of the nineteenth century, mainly in the coal-tar dye industry. That core lay in a threefold relationship, each dimension reinforcing the other. The first dimension grew out of personal ties between industrial chemists and their friends and collaborators in academe, often former mentors as exemplified in the relationship of A. W. von Hofmann and Carl Martius of the AG fiir Anilinfabrikation (Agfa) dye works these ties were maintained and formalized by professional organizations like the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (DCG or German Chemical Society, fd. 1867) and the Verein Deutscher Chemiker (VDC or Association of German Chemists, fd. 1887 as... 

Naphthalene was first isolated from coal tar in 1819 by Alexander Garden it represents about 10% of this complex mixture of aromatics. The industrial importance of naphthalene dates from the latter half of the last century, owing mainly to the ease with which it can be converted into sulfonic adds and thence also to the naphthols, for use as dyestuffs intermediates. However, the first synthetic naphthalene-based dye was a nitro-derivative, Martius Yellow (Add Yellow 24), which was patented in 1864 by Carl Alexander Martius. 

In 1948 Ochoa demonstrated the existence of an enzyme, isocitric dehydrogenase, which catalyzed the oxidation of isocitric acid and required NADP. He was, however, unable to demonstrate the formation of the expected product oxalosuccinic acid (Fig. 1). The existence of this acid as an intermediate in the Krebs cycle had been postulated by Carl Martius. Ochoa was able to prepare the compound by chemical synthesis and showed that cell extracts catalyzed the decarboxylation of this very unstable /S-keto acid to a-ketoglutaric acid. Similar results were simultaneously obtained by Lynen in Germany. 

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