Friedrich Raimund Michael [5] (Fritz) Pregl ( German: Friedrich Raimund Michael (Fritz) Pregl , September 3, 1869 , Laibach - December 13, 1930 , Graz ) - Austrian chemist and doctor, Nobel laureate in chemistry in 1923 "for invention method of microanalysis of organic substances . "
| Fritz Pregl | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | |
| Date of Birth | |
| Place of Birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
| A country |  Austria-Hungary →  Austria |
| Scientific field | chemistry , medicine |
| Place of work | |
| Alma mater | |
| supervisor | Alexander Rollett Zdenko Skraup |
| Known as | creator of microelement analysis methods |
| Awards and prizes | Nobel Prize in Chemistry ( 1923 ) [d] ( 1914 ) |
Content
Biography
Fritz Pregl was born in Laibach (now Ljubljana , Slovenia) in 1869 into a family of an employee of the Treasury. At the end of the local gymnasium, he entered the medical faculty of the University of Graz in 1887. By 1894, when Pregl graduated from the university with a doctorate , he was already an assistant professor of physiology and histology Alexander Rollett [6] , since 1899 a privat-docent [7] , and after Rollett's death in 1903 he took over his chair. At Graz University, Pregl also gained deep knowledge in chemistry under the guidance of Zdenko Skraup [6] .
In 1904, Pregl went to Germany for a year, where he studied with chemists Gustav von Hüfner (in Tübingen), Wilhelm Ostwald (in Leipzig), and Emil Fischer and Emil Abdergalden (in Berlin) [8] . Returning to Graz in 1905, he worked at the Medical and Chemical Institute under the supervision of K. B. Hoffman, and in 1907 he was appointed forensic chemist of the Graz district [6] .
From 1910 to 1913, Pregl lived in Innsbruck, where he was a professor of medical chemistry at a local university [9] . Returning to the University of Graz, in 1916 he was appointed dean of the medical faculty, and in 1920 - vice-rector. He worked in Graz until his death, having died unmarried after a short illness in December 1930. Shortly before his death, he bequeathed a significant amount of money to the Vienna Academy of Sciences for the development of microchemistry; this money formed the basis of the fund, from which premiums to the best Austrian microchemists are paid annually. This award is currently named after Fritz Pregl [6] .
Scientific work
During his years as an assistant at the Department of Physiology in Graz, Franz Pregl became interested in chemistry such as the properties of bile acid and the high concentration of carbon-nitrogen compounds in urine. Later, working with Ostwald and Fisher, he realized the importance for chemistry of accurate experimental data and the need to develop microanalysis methods. As a forensic chemist, working with albumin , he had already experienced the imperfection of the available analysis methods, and during his years in Innsbruck he encountered the fact that during the processing of bile he had an unknown substance that could not be identified by available methods. After that, he decided to create a new analysis method [9] .
As a result of Pregl's work on improving the weights developed by V.G. Kulman, he managed to increase their accuracy, which initially amounted to 0.01 mg, ten times. For the analysis of substances containing, in addition to carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, other chemical elements, Pregl created a filter that filters out all components except water and carbon dioxide. Later, he developed methods for microanalysis of halogens , carboxyl and methyl groups , constructed equipment that determines the molecular weight by the boiling point of a substance [9] . Already in 1912, Pregl methods made it possible to analyze the content of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and halogens in the starting material with a total weight of 5 to 13 mg, and later the accuracy of the methods grew so much that it provided the possibility of analysis with an initial weight of 3-5 mg [6 ] . The analysis time was reduced by him more than three times - up to one hour [9] .
Pregl was in no hurry to publish the results of his research until he was convinced that his methods worked not only for him, but also in other laboratories. Only then, in 1917, he published the monograph "Quantitative Organic Microanalysis" ( German Die Quantitative Microanalyse ). During the life of the author, this book withstood two reprints (in 1923 and 1930) and continued to be reprinted after his death, and also appeared in English and French translations. After 1923, the Graz Medical and Chemical Institute became the place where chemists from all over the world came together to study methods of microanalysis under the supervision of Pregl himself [6] .
Recognition of Merit
Pregl's achievements in chemistry were awarded in 1914 with Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences . In 1920, he became an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Göttingen , and a year later a corresponding member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences [6] . In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the invention of the method of microanalysis of organic substances” [9] (for the first time, Pregl was nominated in 1917 for work on the analysis of enzymes [7] ). In 1929, Pregl became an honorary citizen of the city of Graz [8] .
Fritz Pregl is depicted on an Austrian 1973 postage stamp. In addition to the prize of his name awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Society for Analytical Chemistry also established the Fritz Pregl medal, awarded since 1955 for outstanding achievements in the field of analytical chemistry and especially in the field of determination of trace organic substances [5] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ 1 2 Pregl Fritz // Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ed. A. M. Prokhorov - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1969.
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 11890986X // General regulatory control (GND) - 2012—2016.
- ↑ 1 2 Fritz-Pregl-Medaille (German) . Österreichische Gesellschaft für Analytische Chemie. Date of treatment June 18, 2015.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Biography Fritz Pregl on the Nobel Committee website
- ↑ 1 2 Tišler M. Ob osemdesetletnici Nobelove nagrade za kemijo Frideriku Preglu // Acta Chimica Slovenica. - 2003. - Vol. 50. (Slovenian.)
- ↑ 1 2 Göbel W. Pregl, Fritz // Neue deutsche Biographie. - Berlin, 2001. - Bd. 20. - S. 685. (German)
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 Zelenin K. Pregl, Fritz // Encyclopedia " Round the World ".
Links
- Fritz Pregl biography on the Nobel Committee website .
- Fritz Pregl's Nobel Lecture
- Kirill Zelenin. Pregl, Fritz // Encyclopedia " Around the World ."