Nobel prize winners Fischer

Methane is the principal gas found with coal and oil deposits and is a major fuel and chemical used is the petrochemical industry. Slightly less than 20% of the worlds energy needs are supplied by natural gas. The United States get about 30% of its energy needs from natural gas. Methane can be synthesized industrially through several processes such as the Sabatier method, Fischer Tropsch process, and steam reforming. The Sabatier process, named for Frenchman Paul Sabatier (1854—1941), the 1912 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry from France, involves the reaction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen with a nickel or ruthenium metal catalyst C02 + 4H2 —> CH4 + 2H20. 

In this period Fischer began to be involved with the substitute foods commission, and other commissions such as the one for fat and oils. One of the most important projects was the production of food by heating straw with caustic soda. In May 1916 about 100,000 tons of straw were used for this process. By-products were methanole and acetone, and Fischer offered them to the Bayer company. He knew, however, that the production of acetone from acetylene was already under way. Fischer also tried to find a substitute for coffee. He offered to use synthetic caffeine and mix it with sliced turnips. He made different trials and offered the result to Bayer. In 1918 he reported to the Bayer company on the production of sugar from wood. Richard Willstatter had tried to develop this process, which the Holzspiritusfabrik in Mannheim scaled up for production. But Fischer was not convinced of the efficiency of this company and, in fact, it did not run well. In the 1920s the Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Bergius improved this process and built up a new factory which remained in operation until after World War II. 

Fischer, Emil, 1852-1919 (p. 24, Plate 1), son of a merchant was born in 1852 in Euskirchen (Rhineland) studied chemistry in Bonn (Kekule), StraBburg (A. Baeyer, physics A. Kundt) where he graduated Dr. phil. in 1874. Assistant with Baeyer, from 1874 in Munich. Professor in Erlangen (1882-1885), then in Wurzburg until his call to the famous Chemical Institute of the University of Berlin as successor to A.W.v. Hofmann, in 1892. Amino acid and peptide research from 1900, after extremely successful research in the field of carbohydrates and purines. Fisher died in the summer of 1919 in Berlin. He was the second winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1902, after van t Hoff in 1901. 

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