Schlenk, Wilhelm

Mark took advantage of every opportunity to recover the time lost during the war completing three academic semesters a year he graduated suma cum laude with a Ph.D. in chemistry in July, 1921. His major professor was Wilhelm Schlenk, a highly respected organic chemist. His work, in which his experimental dexterity was especially notable, was both timely and well received. Mark, in his dissertation titled "The Synthesis of Pentaphenylethyl", discussed the presence of the recently proposed free radical. The findings were published in two papers with Schlenk (1, 2). 

A second and greater opportunity came his way in the spring of 1922. Professor Fritz Haber, discoverer of the Haber ammonia synthesis process and head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry (now known as the Max Planck Institute), contacted Professor Schlenk. 

Professor Fritz Haber, Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, no doubt had this in mind when he called Mark to his villa during the summer of 1926. In a visit reminscent of Haber and Schlenk s meeting which brought Mark to the Institute a few years before, Haber outlined Mark s achievements and described a new opportunity for advancement, this time in the chemical industry. The position was as an Assistant Director of Research under Kurt H. Meyer with the giant I.G. Farbenindustrie. 

Shortly before Lennart Eberson died in 2000, he examined the archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to try to understand why Gomberg was not awarded a Nobel Prize.310 The topics dealt with by Tidwell and by Eberson have subsequently been treated again at much greater length. Tidwell s article covers the development of free radical chemistry in the 20th century and cites 399 references.311 Eberson s investigations of the Nobel Archives are presented in even greater detail.312 Tidwell has also written an essay on Wilhelm Schlenk (1879-1943) described as The Man behind the Flask who was a pioneer in free radical chemistry.313... 

Schlenk jr., Wilhelm, Organische EinschluB-Verbindungen. Mit 32 Textabbil-... 

A surveying account of work and life of Wilhelm Schlenk is given in Tidwell 2001. 

Lithium reagents can trace their roots back almost 100 years to the pioneering work of Wilhelm Schlenk [2, 3], who initially prepared ethyllithium, propylUthium and phenyUithium from the corresponding alkyl/aryl mercury compound and lithium metal (Fig. 1.) [4]. 

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