Witt, Otto

Born in Georgia in 1867, Herty was the son of a pharmacist and originally planned to enter his father s profession. After graduating from the University of Georgia with a Ph.B. in 1886, however, he decided to undertake advanced study in chemistry under Ira Remsen at The Johns Hopkins University. Herty received his Ph.D. from Hopkins in 1890, and, after a year at the Georgia State Experiment Station, joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where he remained for the next decade. During that period he took a leave of absence to pursue postdoctoral work at the universities of Berlin and Zurich. While in Berlin, he attended the lectures of the noted synthetic dye chemist Otto Witt. 

In 1890 Otto N. Witt advanced the theory that the dye dissolves in the fabric or the mordant, forming a solid solution. The chief argument in favor of this view was that the color of the dye on the fiber is that of the dissolved dye and not of the solid dye. Magenta, for instance, dyes a red and not a metallic green. Silk dyed with rhodamine fluoresces, while solid rhodamine does not, when obtained on a glass plate by evaporation of an alcoholic solution. 

The compounds obtained by Witt [52], and by Nietzki and Otto [50, 51], by action of nitrosodimethylaniline and of quinone-dichlorimide on phenyl-/3-naphthylamine in all probability belong to this series. 

My last example is a long poem (forty-one stanzas) entitled "Disputation (Frei nach Heine)" by Otto Witt, depicting the battles that had been fought during the previous dozen years, mostly in the Berichte, over the formula for benzene, namely between Kekule s hexagon and Ladenburg s prism formula. Witt s extended metaphor is that of a medieval tournament. 

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). 

Otto Nikolaus Witt (St. Petersburg, 31 March i853 Charlottenburg, 22/23 March 1915), at first educated in Russia, studied (1871) in Zurich Polytechnic under J. Wislicenus and E. Kopp. In 1875 became chemist to the dye firm of Williams, Thomas, and Dower in Brentford, near London, where he discovered the azo-dyes chrysoidine and tropaeoline. In 1882 he became chemist to the Verein Chemischer Fabriken in Mannheim, where he introduced 1 4-naphtholsulphonic acid as an azo-dye intermediate. In 1885 he... 

E Witte. Blei und Stahlakkumulatoren. Varta Fachbuchreihe, Band 4 3 Auflage, Verlag Snummer 6604, Otto Krauskopf Verlag, 1967. 

An example is the case of the naphthol yellow patent. See Caro to Otto N. Witt, 20 Febmary 1886. SSDM 8096, fol. 203-206. 

The position became so critical that Otto Witt, from the end of 1885 an academic chemist and consultant to BASF, agreed early in 1886, in deference to the wishes of Caro, not to publish the results of his work on naphthol yellow. The aim was to prevent their having any influence on the negotiations, over both patents and business, in the United States and England, The BASF tactic enabled it to bring about an agreement with Ivan Levinstein for mutual sharing of the British and United States markets. 

Baeyer, Robert Bunsen, Emil and Otto Fischer, and Otto Witt. 15... 

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