Description
Correspondence; manuscripts, including drafts of his autobiography; reprints of
his writings; subject files relating to his research and to work during World War I, and to professional
activities; laboratory notebooks, his own and those of his students; clippings; photographs; and
certificates of election or appointment to scientific societies.
Also included: two boxes of
correspondence and papers of his son, Hermann, mainly letters of condolence on the death of his father,
and laboratory notebooks of some of his students.
Background
Emil Fischer, biochemist and Nobel Prize recipient, was born on October 9, 1852, at Euskirchen, near Bonn
in Germany. Educated in Euskirchen and Bonn, in 1869 he was apprenticed for a short while to a
brother-in-law, Ernst Friedrichs, a lumber merchant. Since he showed no aptitude for business, he soon
returned to school in Bonn, where he particularly favored mathematics and physics. His father, however,
urged him to take chemistry, a more practical science, and thus he became a pupil of August
Kekulé in 1871. One year later he transferred to the University of Strasbourg to study under
Adolf von Baeyer, graduating in 1875. Here he investigated beer-making organisms, a foundation for some
of his future work with sugar and yeast. And from his association at this period with Dr. Ernst Fischer
evolved his lifelong interest in experimental drugs. His isolation of the chemical compound of
phenyl-hydrazine, while an assistant at the Strasbourg laboratory in 1875, was to form the cornerstone
for much of his subsequent research, culminating in the synthesis of sugar some twelve years later.
Extent
Number of containers: 39 boxes, 12 cartons, 7 oversize folders, 15 oversize volumes
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for
publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not
intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the
reader.
Availability
Collection is open for research.