Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Finding Aid to the Emil Fischer Papers, 1876-1919
BANC MSS 71/95 z
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Collection Title: Emil Fischer Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1876-1919
Collection Number: BANC MSS 71/95 z
Creator:
Fischer, Emil, 1852-1919
Extent:
Number of containers: 39 boxes, 12 cartons, 7 oversize folders, 15 oversize volumes
Repository: The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please
consult the Library's online catalog.
Abstract: 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.
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.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in German
Collection is open for research.
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.
[Identification of item], Emil Fischer Papers, BANC MSS 71/95 z, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley
Materials Cataloged Separately
Photographs transferred to the Pictorial Collections of The
Bancroft Library
Identifier/Call Number: (BANC PIC 1971.041--PIC)
Portraits transferred to the Pictorial Collections of The
Bancroft Library
Identifier/Call Number: (BANC PIC 1971.017--POR)
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.
During the next three years in Munich, where Fischer had followed his master, Baeyer, he and his cousin,
Otto Fischer, analyzed the composition of rosaniline bases, giving new impetus to the dye industry.
Appointed Privat Dozent at the University of Munich in 1878, Fischer was named professor in 1879, and
took charge of the analytical division of Baeyer's laboratory. Here he explored caffeine and theobromine
and their derivatives, which in turn led to the classification of purine derivatives.
From Munich, Fischer went on to Erlangen in 1882, to Würzburg in 1885, and in the fall of 1892
to Berlin, where, as successor to A. W. von Hofmann, he superintended the construction of a new
laboratory, and pursued his study of the synthesis of natural sugars and of fermentation. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, Fischer turned his attention to proteins, developing the so-called
ester method, a process which facilitated qualitative and quantitative analysis of proteins. He then
branched out into polypeptides and peptones with their endless synthetic variants.
While much of Fischer's work was of a theoretical nature, many facets proved applicable to industry. His
research into the composition of the tannin used in the tanning industry led to the production of
valuable synthetic tanning compounds. The chemical industry often adopted to their use methods devised
in Fischer's laboratory. Much interested in pharmaceutics, he was intimately associated in the
development and manufacture of Veronal, Sajodin (a tasteless non-injurious compound), caffeine, and
various bromide preparations. At the outbreak of World War I Fischer was involved in experimental
studies with anti-cancer and diabetes drugs.
During the war years, preoccupied by the lack of vital foodstuffs available in Germany, Fischer channeled
his efforts to the utilization and transformation of raw materials into products suitable for human and
animal consumption, such as the conversion of straw into digestible fodder for horses and cattle, and
the preservation of vegetables, as well as the production of synthetic substitutes for coffee and
butter. He was also instrumental in producing nitric acid as a replacement for the Chilean saltpeter
used in making munitions, and provided synthetic substitutes for camphor.
The fame of Fischer's teaching and the extensive publication of his experiments, models of clarity and
succinctly recorded, attracted many promising young scientists to his laboratory, which turned out
proficient and capable chemists, in great demand in industry. And the honors he won were numerous,
including the Nobel Prize awarded him in 1902 for his work in the purine and sugar groups. His
memberships in honorary and scientific organizations both in Germany and abroad numbered sixty-eight,
according to Fischer himself. Fischer's unremitting efforts spearheaded the creation of the famed
Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Chemie, a research foundation independent of teaching duties. In
his last years, concerned over the plight of scientists during the war, he instigated the founding of
the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Förderung des chemischen Unterrichts, a society formed to
encourage and to assist financially promising young chemists.
Always frail, his health further undermined from early days by the poisonous fumes of mercury and
phenyl-hydrazine, saddened by the deaths of two of his sons during the war, and worn by constant effort,
Emil Fischer died of cancer in Berlin on July 15, 1919.
Fischer's papers, gift of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Hermann O. L. Fischer, were presented to The Bancroft
Library on November 12, 1970. They include correspondence with leading scientists and industrialists
from 1876 to 1919; Fischer's laboratory notebooks as well as those of some of his students; subject
files documenting his work on various compounds, his research during the war years, and his activities
in the establishment of various scientific institutions and societies; manuscripts of many of his
writings and published works, and certificates of appointments to many honorary and scientific
societies.
The collection as a whole documents the development of the new discipline of biochemistry and its many
ramifications, touches on the growth of industry in Germany, and illustrates the impact of World War I
both on industry and scientific thought and processes.
The Key to Arrangement which follows describes the collection in greater detail.