The German organic chemist,Emil Hermann Fischer,1852-1919. Fischer was born in Cologne,and was expected to follow his father in business. He showed more talent for chemistry,however,& studied under Kekule and Baeyer at university. He discovered phenylhydrazine,and worked on sugars,dyes,purines and indoles. He was professor at Wurzburg and then at Berlin University. He did outstanding work on carbohydrates,glycosides,tannins,peptides and proteins,compounds which are fundamental to biochemistry; he won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1902. Later,he worked out the general principles for structure & synthesis of polypeptides. Sadly he killed himself in 1919 |