MSU Gallery of Chemists' Photo-Portraits and Mini-Biographies

Alfred Robert Bader

1924-

Organic chemist, businessman, art collector, philanthropist, religious Jew - these are the descriptors of this multifaceted man. Bader was born in Vienna, sent to Britain at age 14 to escape the Nazis, later to Canada where, at Queens University, he studied engineering chemistry. After his MSc (1947) he entered Harvard and obtained the Ph.D. in two years with Professor Louis Fieser. He then joined the PPG Co. in Milwaukee and, in 1951 founded the Aldrich Chemical Company. Largely through his personal efforts, Aldrich (and later Sigma-Aldrich) displaced Eastman Kodak as the major supplier of organic chemicals to academic and industrial laboratories in the U.S. and elsewhere. The availability of diverse starting materials from Aldrich allowed investigators to devote more of their time to their research projects. The above photo-portrait of Dr. Bader was used in Aldrich advertisements under the caption "Please Bother Us". For more information about this remarkable man, read and enjoy his autobiography "Alfred Bader: Adventures of a Chemist Collector", Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1995.