Hermann Fehling

Fehling, Hermann 

Born June 9, 1812, in Liibeck; died July 1, 1885, in Stuttgart. German organic and industrial chemist.

In 1837, Fehling graduated from the University of Heidelberg and then worked in the laboratory of J. Liebig in Giessen. In 1839 he was appointed professor at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart.

Fehling studied polybasic organic acids, and he obtained paraldehyde (1839), benzonitrile, and succinimide (1844). In 1850 he proposed a reagent (Fehling’s reagent) for determining simple sugars (monosaccharides). As an industrial chemist, Fehling investigated mineral waters and tannins, and he studied processes of bread-making. Fehling contributed to the editing of several sections of H. Kolbe’s Textbook of Organic Chemistry (3 vols., 1854–77), and in 1871 he became editor of the well-known handbook Glossary of Chemical Terms.