Nobel Prizes and Laureates

Nobel Prizes and Laureates

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1973
Ernst Otto Fischer, Geoffrey Wilkinson

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Ernst Otto Fischer - Facts

Ernst Otto Fischer

Ernst Otto Fischer

Born: 10 November 1918, Munich, Germany

Died: 23 July 2007, Munich, Germany

Affiliation at the time of the award: Technical University, Munich, Federal Republic of Germany

Prize motivation: "for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so called sandwich compounds"

Field: inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry

Prize share: 1/2


The world around us is made up of atoms that are assembled in molecules. Even though there is an enormous number of molecules in nature, it is possible to synthesize molecules in the laboratory that are not found in nature. In 1952 Ernst Otto Fischer and Geoffrey Wilkinson, working independently of one another, revealed a new type of chemical compound consisting of a carbon compound and a metallic atom. In these sandwich structures, which do not exist in nature, two ring-shaped carbon compounds enclose a metallic atom on each side.

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