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

* Richard Willstätter

1873-1942

 

Portrait: 127
Location - Floor: First - Zone: Room 136 - Wall: South - Sequence: 1
Source: Kedzie Collection
Sponsor: Harold Hart


 
Richard Willstätter
 

An organic chemist, he did research on alkaloids (atropine, cocaine), cyclooctatetraene, the structure of chlorophyll and other plant pigments (for which he received the 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) and on enzymes. In 1924, he resigned his professorship at Munich to protest anti-Semitism, and in 1939 had to leave Germany.