Friedrich Wöhler

Friedrich Wöhler (31 July 1800 – 23 September 1882) was a German chemist whose work spanned both organic and inorganic chemistry. He was the first person to obtain pure metallic samples of the elements beryllium and yttrium, and he also became the first to create several inorganic compounds, such as silane and silicon nitride. In organic chemistry, Wöhler is especially remembered for his synthesis of urea. By producing this organic compound in a lab from inorganic starting materials, his work challenged the then-dominant idea of vitalism—the belief that only living organisms could generate organic substances. Still, some historians question just how much Wöhler’s experiment actually weakened faith in vitalism.

Wöhler was born in Eschersheim, Germany, on 31 July 1800, the son of a veterinarian. As a boy, he enjoyed collecting minerals, drawing, and science. He attended the Frankfurt Gymnasium for his secondary education and, while there, began doing chemistry experiments in a home lab his father set up. In 1820, he started his higher education at Marburg University. On 2 September 1823, he passed his exams for a Doctor of Medicine, Surgery, and Obstetrics at Heidelberg University, having studied under chemist Leopold Gmelin. Gmelin urged him to focus on chemistry and arranged for Wöhler to work with chemist Jacob Berzelius in Stockholm, Sweden. That time with Berzelius launched a long personal and professional bond between them. Wöhler translated many of Berzelius’s scientific works into German for international distribution. Over his lifetime, he wrote roughly 275 books, editions, and papers.

From 1826 to 1831, Wöhler taught chemistry at the Gewerbeschule in Berlin. He then taught at the Höhere Gewerbeschule in Kassel from 1831 to 1836. In the spring of 1836, he succeeded Friedrich Stromeyer as an Ordinary Professor of Chemistry at the University of Göttingen, where he held the chemistry chair for 46 years, until his death. At Göttingen, about 8,000 research students trained in his laboratory. In 1834, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In inorganic chemistry, Wöhler studied more than 25 elements. Hans Christian Ørsted had first isolated aluminium in 1825 by reducing aluminium chloride with a potassium amalgam, but no one else could replicate his results until 1936; Ørsted is now credited with discovering aluminium. With Ørsted’s permission, Wöhler improved on his method, swapping potassium metal for the potassium amalgam. On 22 October 1827, he isolated pure aluminium powder, and in 1845 he showed that this powder could be turned into solid balls of pure metallic aluminium. For this, Wöhler is credited with the first isolation of aluminium in pure form. In 1828, he became the first to isolate pure metallic beryllium (also done independently by Antoine Bussy) and pure metallic yttrium, both by heating their anhydrous chlorides with potassium. In 1850, he showed that what had been thought to be metallic titanium was actually a mix of titanium, carbon, and nitrogen, and he produced the purest form of titanium known at the time (completely pure titanium was isolated later, in 1910, by Matthew A. Hunter). He also created a chemical synthesis for calcium carbide and silicon nitride. Working with French chemist Sainte Claire Deville, Wöhler isolated crystalline boron, and he isolated crystalline silicon—both elements had never before been seen in crystalline form. In 1856, with Heinrich Buff, he prepared the inorganic compound silane. He made the first samples of boron nitride by melting boric acid with potassium cyanide, and he developed a method for preparing calcium carbide. Wöhler also had a strong interest in meteorites. He showed that some meteoric stones contain organic matter, analyzed many meteorites, and for years wrote the digest on meteorite literature in the *Jahresberichte über die Fortschritte der Chemie*. He amassed the best private collection of meteoric stones and irons that existed.

In organic chemistry, while lacking his own lab at Kassel in 1832, Wöhler worked with Justus Liebig in Liebig’s Giessen laboratory. That year, they published a study on the oil of bitter almonds. Through detailed chemical analysis, they demonstrated that a group of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms could behave chemically like a single atom, replace an atom in a compound, and be swapped for other atoms. Specifically, their research on bitter almond oil showed that a group with the composition C7H5O could be treated as a single functional group—later called the benzoyl radical. This work helped lay the foundation for the concept of functional groups in organic chemistry.