- Arthur Michael
Arthur Michael (
August 7 1853 –February 8 1942 ) was an American organic chemist who is best known for theMichael reaction .Life
Arthur Michael was born in
Buffalo, New York in 1853 to John and Clara Michael. He was educated in that same city, learning chemistry both from a local teacher and in his own homebuilt laboratory. An illness thwarted Michael's plans to attendHarvard , and instead he traveled to Europe with his parents.At age 18, Michael was admitted for study to Hofmann's chemical laboratory in
Berlin , but through various academic transfers managed also to study with a number of other well-known chemists, such as Bunsen and Wurtz. Michael moved back to the US in 1880, working as a Professor of Chemistry at Tufts College.At Tufts College, Michael met and married, in 1888, one of his science students, Helen Cecilia De Silver Abbott. Following several years in England, during which the couple worked in a self-constructed laboratory on the
Isle of Wight , they returned to the United States where Arthur Michael again taught at Tufts, leaving in 1907 as an emeritus professor.Michael's retirement from academia lasted but five years. In 1912 he became a Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, and there he stayed until a second retirement, in 1936. From a twenty-first century vantage point, it is interesting that Michael never received a university degree, yet worked with some of the foremost chemists of his day, obtained chemistry professorships, and achieved fame among his peers.
Arthur Michael died in Orlando, Florida on February 8, 1942. [cite journal | title = Arthur Michael | author = Fieser, Louis | journal = Biographical Memoirs | volume = 46 | issue = | year = 1975 | pages = 331 – 366 | url = http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=569&page=331] His wife died in 1904. They had no children.
Work
Arthur Michael is remembered today primarily for the
Michael reaction , also called the Michael addition. As originally defined by Michael, the reaction involves the combination of anenolate ion of a ketone or aldehyde to an α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compound at the β carbon. [cite journal | author = Michael, Arthur | title = | journal = J. Prakt. Chem. | year = 1887 | month = | volume = 36 | pages = 349 – 356 ]Michael was also well known in his day for incorporating thermodynamic concepts into organic chemistry, particularly for his use of entropy arguments.
Activities and honors
* National Academy of Sciences (1889)
References
Further reading
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External links
* - See "The Theoretical Speculations of Arthur Michael" (Chapter 21)
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* [http://chem.tufts.edu/AMichael-Bio.html Brief biography and a photograph]
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