Emil fischer Biography

Emil Fischer

(Euskirchen, 1852-Berlin, 1919) German chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1902 for his work on the synthesis of sugars and purines.He studied chemistry at the universities of Bonn and Strasbourg, and was an assistant professor at the latter from 1874 to 1878.In 1875 he worked as an assistant to Adolf von Baeyer in Munich and carried out his doctoral thesis with him.In 1882 he was professor of chemistry at Erlangen, three years later at Würzburg, and in Berlin in 1892, where he succeeded Hofmann in his chair.

Emil Fischer

His main studies correspond to the molecular structure of various biochemical molecules, especially sugars.In 1876 he discovered phenylhydrazine, a compound that would be very useful later and that caused chronic eczema.His work involved an ordering of carbohydrate chemistry, partly thanks to the use of phenylhydrazine.This research provided the synthesis of a series of sugars; his greatest success was the synthesis of glucose, fructose and mannose in 1890.

His studies on glycosides and tannins are of high quality.In 1899 he began to work with peptides and proteins (especially albumin).It was Emil Fischer who clearly saw their common nature as linear polypeptides derived from amino acids, who established the principles for their synthesis, and who obtained an octadecapeptide, consisting of 15 glycines and 3 leucine residues.He had previously been the first to synthesize, together with Forneau, the glycine-glycine dipeptide, and published a work on the hydrolysis of casein.Using the methods of separation and identification of amino acids he discovered a new type of them, the cyclic amino acids: proline and oxyproline.All these works led to a better understanding of proteins and formed the basis for further studies.

In addition, he discovered the composition of multiple substances related to uric acid, caffeine and theobromine; one of them was purines, in 1884, two of which (guanine and adenine) are part of the nucleic acid structure.In Erlangen, Emil Fischer studied and synthesized the active principles of tea, coffee and cocoa (especially caffeine and theobromine).He succeeded in synthesizing purines in 1898.

In 1903, Joseph von Mering and Fischer synthesized diethylbarbiturate (also known as barbital or veronal ) , the first slow-acting compound derived from barbituric acid; The name of veronal is due to the fact that the news of the good results of the tests carried out on the product came when Fischer was in Verona.With this Fischer created an entirely new class of drugs, the barbiturates.Since then, a multitude of variants of fast and long-lasting action have been achieved, which have allowed the development of numerous pharmacological applications, such as anesthetics, anxiolytics, sedatives, anticombulsants and as enhancers of the action of other drugs (analgesics, anti-flu, tranquilizers).