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Wilhelm Traube (10 January 1866 - 28 September 1942 Berlin), German chemist
Biography
Traube was born at Ratibor in Silesia (now Racibórz, Poland), a son of the famous private scholar Moritz Traube.
For a short time he studied law, following studies in chemistry in Heidelberg, Breslau, 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 adjunct professor and 1929 a tidier professor. Hermann Emil Fischer proposed Traube for head of a department at the Chemical Institute (Analytical Department) of the University in Berlin. Traube was very inventive and was holder of many patents in cellulose chemistry and salts of metal complexes.
He is well-known for a procedure of synthesis of caffeine. The TRAUBEsche Synthese (synthesis of purine) was important for the pharmalogical 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. Otto Hahn (1879-1968) used an organic salt, which Traube has constructed, to detect Barium in the products of nuclear fission. Traube liked to play the piano. He was Jewish but confessed to evangelic. In 1935 the Nazis disprived him of teaching warrant and Traube had to sign "Dr. Wilhelm Israel Traube, Kennkarte J Berlin A 370 523".
Traube was expropriated and arrested in 1942, and he died in Berlin from cruelties. Otto Hahn had knowledge of the forthcoming deportation and tried to rescue him without success. Traube is buried in the Jewish Cemetery Berlin-Weissensee, missing any memorial stone.
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1866 births | 1942 deaths | German natives of Silesia | German chemists | Holocaust victims
"Wilhelm Traube"