Friedrich August Kekule Facts

Friedrich August Kekule Facts
Friedrich August Kekule (7 September 1829 to 13 July 1896) was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, Kekulé was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry.
Interesting Friedrich August Kekule Facts:
Kekule was born in Darmstadt, Germany and was the son of a civil servant.
He never used the name Friedrich and after he was ennobled by the Kaiser in 1895, he adopted the name August Kekule von Stradonitz.
He graduated from the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Darmstadt and in 1847, entered the University of Giessen.
After four years of study and a brief compulsory military service, he received his PhD in 1852.
In 1856 he became a teacher at the University of Heidelberg, and rose to the rank of full professor at the University of Ghent in 1858.
In 1857 he formulated the theory of chemical structure from the discovery that carbon atoms link to each other.
The theory of structure clarified things in the field of organic chemistry and paved the way for many breakthroughs in that field.
His most famous work was on the structure of benzene and in 1865 he posited that it was a ring containing 6 carbon atom with alternating single and double bonds.
From 1867 to his death in 1896, he worked and taught at the University of Bonn.
The understanding of aromatic compounds such was so important to pure and applied chemistry that in 1890 the German Chemical Society gave an appreciation dinner to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Kekule's first benzene paper.
In addition to his own honors, his students won the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry in 1901, 1902 and 1905.


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