Early Work
Hermann Staudinger was born in 1881 in Worms. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Halle in 1903, Staudinger took a position at the University of Strasbourg.
It was here that he discovered the ketenes, a family of molecules characterized by the general form depicted in Figure 1. Ketenes would prove a synthetically important intermediate for the production of yet-to-be-discovered antibiotics such as penicillin and amoxicillin.
In 1907, Staudinger began an assistant professorship at the Technical University of Karlsruhe. Here, he successfully isolated a number of useful organic compounds (including a synthetic coffee flavoring) as more completely reviewed by Rolf Mülhaupt.
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