Biography
Traube was born at Ratibor (Racibórz) in Prussian Silesia, a son of the famous private scholar Moritz Traube.
After studying law for a short time, he studied chemistry in Heidelberg, Breslau (today Wrocław), Munich and Berlin. Among his tutors were August Wilhelm von Hofmann, Adolf von Baeyer and Karl Friedrich Rammelsberg. In 1888 he received his doctorate "Über die Additionsprodukte der Cyansäure". Since 1897 Traube was assistant at the Pharmakological Institute in Berlin, since 1902 assistant at the Pharmaceutical Institute and "Titularprofessor". In 1911 he became an associate professor and 1929 a full professor. Hermann Emil Fischer nominated Traube to be department head at the Chemical Institute (Analytical Department) of the University in Berlin. Traube was inventive and held many patents in cellulose chemistry and salts of metal complexes.
Traube is well known for a procedure of synthesis of caffeine. The TRAUBEsche Synthese (Traube purine synthesis) was important for the pharmacological industry. The University of Kiel appointed him full professor, but he refused. Traube was a board member of the German Chemical Society and became in 1926 a member of the Leopoldina in Halle. In December 1938 Otto Hahn used an organic salt that Traube had constructed in order to detect barium in the products of nuclear fission. Traube liked to play the piano. He was of Jewish origin but belonged to the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.
In 1935 the Nazis deprived Traube of the right to teach. His property was expropriated, and he was arrested on 11 September 1942. Traube had planned to commit suicide with cyanide before deportation, but Hahn had asked him not to do so. Traube died in prison in Berlin as a result of maltreatment. Otto Hahn and Walter Schoeller had knowledge of the forthcoming deportation and tried to rescue him on the same day, only with formal success, they came only hours too late. Traube is buried in Berlin's Weißensee Cemetery; there is no memorial stone.
Read more about this topic: Wilhelm Traube
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