30 Facts About Karl Ziegler

One of many awards Ziegler received was the Werner von Siemens Ring in 1960 jointly with Otto Bayer and Walter Reppe, for expanding the scientific knowledge of and the technical development of new synthetic materials.

Karl Ziegler was born on 26 November 1898 in Helsa near Kassel, Germany and was the second son of Karl Ziegler, a Lutheran minister, and Luise Rall Ziegler.

Karl Ziegler was introduced to many notable individuals through his father, including Emil Adolf von Behring, recognized for the diphtheria vaccine.

Karl Ziegler studied at the University of Marburg and was able to omit his first two semesters of study due to his extensive background knowledge.

Karl Ziegler's studies were interrupted however, as during 1918 he was deployed to the front as a soldier to serve in World War I He received his Ph.

Karl Ziegler's dissertation was on "Studies on semibenzole and related compunds" which led to three publications.

Karl Ziegler showed an eagerness for science at an early age.

Karl Ziegler progressed through schooling quickly receiving a doctorate from the University of Marburg in 1920.

Karl Ziegler investigated the stability of radicals on trivalent carbons leading him to study organometallic compounds and their application in his research.

Karl Ziegler worked on the syntheses of multi-membered ring systems.

In 1933 Karl Ziegler published his first major work on large ring systems, "Vielgliedrige Ringsysteme" which presented the fundamentals for the Ruggli-Karl Ziegler dilution principle.

Karl Ziegler, who was a Patron Member of the SS received the War Merit Cross 2nd Class in October 1940.

From 1943 until 1969, Karl Ziegler was the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research formerly known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research in Mulheim an der Ruhr as a successor to Franz Fischer.

Karl Ziegler was credited with much of the postwar resurrection of chemical research in Germany and helped found the German Chemical Society in 1949.

Karl Ziegler was the president of the German Society for Petroleum Science and Coal Chemistry, from 1954 to 1957.

Karl Ziegler's daughter, Dr Marianna Ziegler Witte was a doctor of medicine and married a chief physical of a children's hospital in the Ruhr.

Karl Ziegler enjoyed traveling around the world with his family, especially on cruises.

Karl Ziegler even charted special cruises and airplanes for eclipse viewing.

Karl Ziegler enjoyed pictures of the places that he and his wife called home, including pictures of Halle and the Ruhr valley.

Karl Ziegler died in Mulheim, Germany on 12 August 1973; his wife died in 1980.

Karl Ziegler was encouraged to try to synthesize similarly substituted free radicals, and successfully prepared 1,2,4,5-tetraphenylallyl in 1923 and pentaphenylcyclopentadienyl in 1925.

Karl Ziegler used strong bases such as the lithium and sodium salts of amines, to accomplish the cyclization of long-chain hydrocarbons possessing terminal cyano groups.

Karl Ziegler discovered that ether scission opened a new method of preparing sodium and potassium alkyls, and found that these compounds could easily be converted to the hexa-substituted ethane derivatives.

Karl Ziegler had just observed the first addition of an organoalkali metal compound across a carbon-carbon double bond.

Since Karl Ziegler was working at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, ethylene was readily available as a byproduct from coal gas.

Karl Ziegler's attempts were thwarted because a competing elimination reaction kept occurring causing an anomalous result: instead of ethylene being converted into a mixture of higher aluminum alkyls, its dimer, 1-butene, was almost the only product.

Karl Ziegler realized the significance of this finding; if a nickel salt could have such a dramatic influence on the course of an ethylene-aluminum alkyl reaction, then perhaps another metal might delay the elimination reaction.

Karl Ziegler was able to obtain high molecular weight polyethylene and, most importantly, to do so at low ethylene pressures.

In 1952, Karl Ziegler disclosed his catalyst to the Montecatini Company in Italy, for which Giulio Natta was acting as a consultant.

Karl Ziegler, meanwhile concentrated mainly on the large-scale production of polyethylene and copolymers of ethylene and propylene.