HERMANN EMIL FISCHER -- THE NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY -- 1902

HERMANN EMIL FISCHER won the noble prize in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses.
Hermann Emil Fischer was born on October 9, 1852, at Euskirchen, in the Cologne district.
His father was a successful business man.
He passed his final examination in 1869 with great distinction. His father wished him to enter the family lumber business, but Emil wished to study the natural sciences, especially physics and, after an unsuccessful trial of Emil in the business, his father said that Emil was too stupid to be a business man and had better be a student – sent him in 1871 to the University of Bonn to study chemistry.
In 1872, however, Emil, who still wished to study physics, was persuaded by his cousin Otto Fischer, to go with him to the newly established University of Strasbourg, where Professor Rose was working on the Bunsen method of analysis. Here Fischer met Adolf Baeyer, under whose influence he finally decided to devote his life to chemistry.
The work, however, on which Fischer’s fame chiefly rests, was his studies of the purines and the sugars. This work, carried out between 1882 and 1906 showed that various substances, little known at that time, such as adenine, xanthine, in vegetable substance, caffeine and in animal excrete uric acid and guanine, all belonged to one homogeneous family and could be derived from one another.
In 1884, Fischer began his great work on the sugars, which transformed the knowledge of these compounds and welded the new knowledge obtained into a coherent whole
Throughout his life he was well served by his excellent memory, which enabled him, although he was not a naturally good speaker, to memorize manuscripts of lectures that he had written.
Emil Fischer died on July 15, 1919.