Major Works
During his work with Friedrich Kekulé in Bonn he started a systematic analysis of the terpenes present in essential oils. Up to this time only a few had been isolated in pure form, and structural information was sparse. Melting point comparison and the measurement of mixtures was one of the methods to confirm identical substances. For this method the mostly liquid terpenes had to be transformed into crystalline compounds. With stepwise derivatisation, especially additions to the double bond present in some of the terpenes, he achieved the goal of obtaining crystalline compounds. The investigation of the rearrangement reactions of cyclic unsaturated terpenes made it possible to obtain the structure of an unknown terpene by following the rearangments to a known structure of a terpene. With these principal methods he opened the path to systematic research on terpenes.
He was responsible for naming terpene and pinene, and for undertaking the first systematic study of pinene^ .
He wrote a book about the chemistry of terpenes, "Terpene und Campher" (1909).
Otto Wallach is known for Wallach's rule, Wallach degradation, the Leuckart-Wallach reaction and the Wallach rearrangement.
Read more about this topic: Otto Wallach
Famous quotes containing the words major and/or works:
“Self-centeredness is a natural outgrowth of one of the toddler’s major concerns: What is me and what is mine...? This is why most toddlers are incapable of sharing ... to a toddler, what’s his is what he can get his hands on.... When something is taken away from him, he feels as though a piece of him—an integral piece—is being torn from him.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)