Friedrich Asinger

Friedrich Asinger (26 June 1907 in Freiland/Niederdonau (Austria); – 7 March 1999 in Aachen) was an Austrian chemist and professor for Technical Chemistry. He is well known for his development of a multi-component reaction, the Asinger reaction for the synthesis of 3-thiazolines.

Asinger grew up with an older brother and two sisters in Lower Austria, as son of the head of a paper and cardboard factory. His mother came from a family of innkeepers. He graduated in 1924 from the upper secondary school in Krems an der Donau at the age of 17. He studied chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology, where he became in 1932 an academic student of Friedrich Böck (1876–1958). He successfully defended his PhD thesis on "Über den Einfluß von Substituenten auf die Verseifungsgeschwindigkeit von Benzalchlorid (The Influence of substituents on the saponification rate of benzal chloride)" and graduated with distinction.

Asinger spent several years as department head in different companies in the chemical industry. He worked with the company Koreska, a factory for the production of chemically prepared paper, as a chemist at the Vacuum Oil Company in Vienna, and since 1 May 1937 as a research chemist in the Central Testing Laboratory of the ammonia plants in Leuna GmbH Merseburg. In 1943 he obtained his Habilitation at the University of Graz. He became first lecturer at the University of Halle-Wittenberg on 23 February 1944. He took several positions in university and industrial research, in example he was an honorary lecturer at the University of Halle-Wittenberg where Karl Ziegler was the department head.

Because of his membership in the NSDAP, where he was a member since 1933 he was discharged in December 1945 as an honorary lecturer. His efforts to reverse his dismissal, despite written support from the Leuna plant - also with reference to the benevolence of his Russian superiors - and supporting letters from various social organizations, were without success.

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