Paul Walden
| Paul Walden | |
|---|---|
Paul Walden
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| Born |
26 July 1863 Rozulas, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire (now Pīpēni, Stalbe parish, Latvia) |
| Died | 22 January 1957 (aged 93) Gammertingen, West Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | Riga Technical University |
| Known for | Walden inversion |
Paul Walden (Latvian: Pauls Valdens; 26 July 1863 – 22 January 1957) was a Russian and Latvian-German chemist known for his work in stereochemistry and history of chemistry. In particular he invented the stereochemical reaction known as Walden inversion and synthesized the first room-temperature ionic liquid, ethylammonium nitrate.
Walden was born in Rozula in present-day Stalbe parish, Pārgauja municipality, Latvia in a large peasant family. At the age of four, he lost his father and later his mother. Thanks to financial support from his two older brothers who lived in Riga (one was a merchant and another served as a lieutenant) Walden managed to complete his education – first graduated with honors from the district school in the town of Cēsis (1876), and then from the Riga Technical High School (1882). In December 1882, he enrolled into the Riga Technical University and became seriously interested in chemistry. In 1886, he published his first scientific study on the color evaluation of the reactions of nitric and nitrous acid with various reagents and establishing the limits of sensitivity of the color method to detection of nitric acid. In April 1887, he was appointed a member of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society. During this time, Walden started his collaboration with Wilhelm Ostwald (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1909) that has greatly influenced his development as a scientist. Their first work together was published in 1887 and was devoted to the dependence of the electrical conductivity of aqueous solutions of salts on their molecular weight.
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