Ernst Otto Fischer (German pronunciation:[ˈɛʁnstˌɔtoˈfɪʃɐ]ⓘ; 10 November 1918 – 23 July 2007) was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize for pioneering work in the area oforganometallic chemistry.
He was born inSolln, a borough ofMunich. His parents were Karl T. Fischer, Professor of Physics at theTechnical University of Munich (TU), and Valentine née Danzer. He graduated in 1937 withAbitur. Before the completion of two years'compulsory military service, theSecond World War broke out, and he served in Poland, France, and Russia. During a period of study leave, towards the end of 1941 he began to study chemistry at theTechnical University of Munich. Following the end of the War, he was released by the Americans in the autumn of 1945 and resumed his studies.
Fischer graduated from TUM in 1949. He then started his doctoral thesis as an assistant to ProfessorWalter Hieber in theInorganic Chemistry Institute, His thesis was entitled "The Mechanisms of Carbon Monoxide Reactions of Nickel(II) Salts in the Presence of Dithionites and Sulfoxylates".[1]
After receiving his doctorate in 1952, he remained at TU. He continued his research on theorganometallic chemistry of thetransition metal. He almost immediately challenged the structure for ferrocene as postulated by Pauson and Keally.[2] Shortly thereafter, he published the structural data offerrocene and the new complexesnickelocene andcobaltocene.[3] Near the same time, he focused also on the then baffling chemistry resulting from Hein's reactions of chromium(III) chloride withphenylmagnesium bromide. This effort resulted in his isolation ofbis(benzene)chromium, foretelling an entirely new class of sandwich complexes.[4][5]
He was appointed a lecturer at the TU in 1955 and, in 1957, professor and then, in 1959, C4 professor. In 1964 he took the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the TU.
In 1964, he was elected a member of the Mathematics/Natural Science section of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In 1969 he was appointed a member of theGerman Academy of Natural Scientists, Leopoldina and in 1972 was given an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy of the University of Munich.
He lectured across the world on metal complexes ofcyclopentadienyl, indenyl, arenes, olefins, and metal carbonyls. In the 1960s his group discovered a metal alkylidene and alkylidyne complexes, since referred to asFischer carbenes and Fischer-carbynes.[6] Overall he published about 450 journal articles and he trained many PhD and postdoctoral students, many of whom went on to noteworthy careers. Among his many foreign lectureships, he was Firestone Lecturer at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison (1969), visiting professor at theUniversity of Florida (1971), andArthur D. Little visiting professor at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (1973).
He died on 23 July 2007 in Munich.[7] At the time of his death, Fischer was the oldest living German Nobel laureate. He was succeeded byManfred Eigen, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967 and is nine years younger than Fischer was.
^Hieber, W.; Fischer, E. O. (1952). "Ũber den Mechanismus der Kohlenoxydreaktion von Nickel(II)- und KobaIt(II)-Salzen bei Gegenwart von Dithionit".Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie.269 (4–6):292–307.doi:10.1002/zaac.19522690417.
^E. O. Fischer (1955). "Metallverbindungen des Cyclopentadiens und des Indens".Angewandte Chemie.67 (7): 211.doi:10.1002/ange.19550670708.
C. Elschenbroich, A. Salzer ”Organometallics : A Concise Introduction” (2nd Ed) (1992) from Wiley-VCH: Weinheim.ISBN3-527-28165-7
Wolfgang A. Herrmann (2003). "Mediator between chemical worlds, aesthete of sciences, and man of Bavaria: Ernst Otto Fischer".Journal of Organometallic Chemistry.684 (1–2):1–5.doi:10.1016/S0022-328X(03)00715-0.
E. O. Fischer (1952). "Über Cycopentadien-Komplexe des Eisen und des Kobalts".Angewandte Chemie.64 (22): 620.doi:10.1002/ange.19520642206.
