Otto Diels (redirected from Otto Paul Hermann Diels)

Diels, Otto 

Born Jan. 23, 1876, in Hamburg; died Mar. 7, 1954, in Kiel. German organic chemist.

Diels graduated from the University of Berlin in 1899 and became a professor there in 1906. Beginning in 1916 he was a professor at the University of Kiel. In 1927 he proposed a method of dehydrogenating organic compounds without changing their carbon skeleton using selenium. He dehydrogenated cholesterol and other sterols. Diels discovered diene synthesis with K. Alder in 1928 and using this method obtained a large number of organic compounds of different classes. He received a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1950, with K. Alder.

WORKS

“Dien-Synthese und Selen-Dehydrierung in ihrer Bedeutung fur die Entwicklung der organischen Chemie.” Berichte der Deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, 1936, vol. 69A, no. 11.
Einführung in die organische Chemie, 15th ed. Weinheim, 1953.

REFERENCES

Kazanskii, B. A. “Novye sintezy s uchastiem nepredel’nykh soedinenii.” Uspekhi khimii, 1934, vol. 3, issue 1.
Sass,J. “Inmemoriam Otto Diels.” Laboratoriums Praxis, 1954, Jg. 6, pp. 37–41.