Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist
Leopold Ružička Template:Post-nominals ({{#invoke:IPA|main}};<ref name="HJP">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> born Lavoslav Stjepan Ružička; 13 September 1887 – 26 September 1976)<ref name="frs">Template:Cite journal</ref> was a Croatian-Swiss scientist and joint winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes"<ref name = Nobel /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> "including the first chemical synthesis of male sex hormones."<ref name="hillier19">Template:Cite journal</ref> He worked most of his life in Switzerland, and received eight doctorates honoris causa in science, medicine, and law; seven prizes and medals; and twenty-four honorary memberships in chemical, biochemical, and other scientific societies.
Early lifeEdit
Ružička was born in Vukovar (until 1918 in the Austria-Hungary, today in Croatia). His family of craftsmen and farmers was mostly of Croat origin,<ref>His great-grandparents included a Czech, from whom the name Ružička stems, an Upper Austrian and his wife from Wurtemberg, the other five being Croats</ref> with a Czech great-grandparent, Ružička, and a great-grandmother and a great-grandfather from Austria.<ref name = Nobel>Template:Cite book
Now available from {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web
}}</ref> He lost his father, Stjepan, at the age of four, and his mother, Amalija Sever, took him and his younger brother Stjepan, to live in Osijek.<ref name=frs/>
Ružička attended the classics program secondary school in Osijek. He changed his original idea of becoming a priest and switched to studying technical disciplines.<ref name=em90/> Chemistry was his choice, probably because he hoped to get a position at the newly opened sugar refinery built in Osijek.<ref name=frs/>
Owing to the excessive hardship of everyday and political life, he left and chose the High Technical School in Karlsruhe in Germany. He was a good student in areas he liked and that he thought would be necessary and beneficial in the future, which was organic chemistry. That is why his physical chemistry professor, Fritz Haber (Nobel laureate in 1918), opposed his summa cum laude degree. However, in the course of his studies, Ružička set up excellent cooperation with Hermann Staudinger (a Nobel laureate in 1953). Studying within Staudinger's department, he obtained his doctoral degree in 1910, then moved to Zürich as Staudinger's assistant.
Career in researchEdit
Ružička's first works originated in the field of chemistry of natural compounds.<ref name=cid>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He remained in this field of research all his life. He investigated the ingredients of the Dalmatian insect powder Pyrethrum (from the herb Tanacetum cinerariifolium), a highly esteemed insecticide found in pyrethrins, which were the focus of his work with Staudinger. Ružička later said of this time: "Toward the end of five and a half years of mainly synthetic work on the pyrethrins I had come to the firm conclusion that we were barking up the wrong tree." In this way, he came into contact with the chemistry of Terpineol, a fragrant oil of vegetable origin, interesting to the perfume industry. He and Staudinger split company when he started cooperation with the Chuit & Naef Company (later known as Firmenich) in Geneva.<ref name=em90>Albert Eschenmoser: "Leopold Ruzicka – From the Isoprene Rule to the Question of Life's Origin" CHIMIA 44 (1990)</ref><ref name=frs/>
In 1916–1917, he received the support of the oldest perfume manufacturer in the world Haarman & Reimer, of Holzminden, Germany. He became a Swiss citizen in 1917,<ref name=frs/> and published his Habilitation in 1918.<ref name=em90/> Fornasir and he isolated linalool in 1919.<ref name=em90/>
With expertise in the terpene field, he became senior lecturer in 1918, and in 1923, honorary professor at the ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) as well as the University of Zurich. Here, with a group of his doctoral students, he proved the structure of the compounds muscone and civetone, macrocyclic ketone scents derived from the musk deer (Moschus moschiferus) and the civet cat (Viverra civetta).<ref name=sell99>Template:Cite book</ref> These were the first natural products shown to have rings with more than six atoms, and at the time that Ružička inferred that civetone as having a 17-member ring.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Synthetic techniques at the time were only known for rings of up to eight members.<ref name = Agrawal>Template:Cite book</ref> Muscone had been isolated in 1904<ref name=pybus06>Template:Cite book</ref> but was not identified as 3-methylcyclopentadecanone<ref name=ruzicka26a>Template:Cite journal</ref> until Ružička suspected a macrocycle, having characterised civetone. He also developed a method for synthesising macrocycles, now known as the Ružička large ring synthesis,<ref name=ruzicka26b>Template:Cite journal</ref> which he demonstrated by preparing civetone in 1927.<ref name = Agrawal /><ref name=ruzicka27>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In 1921, the Geneva perfume manufacturers Chuit & Naef asked him to collaborate.<ref name=frs/> Working here, Ružička achieved financial independence, but not as big as he had planned, so he left Zürich to start working for the Basel-based CIBA.Template:Citation needed In 1927, he took over the organic chemistry chair at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, he remained for three years and then returned to Switzerland, which was superior in its chemical industry. A synergistic upheaval in both the administration and chemistry departments coincided to make his good fortune.<ref name=frs/>
Ružička was the first to synthesize musk at an industrial scale. Firmenech named this product Exaltone. Other Swiss manufacturers and DuPont were in competition with them.<ref name="gs15">Template:Cite journal</ref>
In 1934, Ružička synthesized the male hormone androsterone and also proved "its constitutional and configurational relation to the sterols." This was followed in 1935 by the partial synthesis of the much more active male hormone testosterone. Both discoveries led to the pre-eminence of the Swiss industry in the steroid hormone field.<ref name=frs/> At ETH Zurich he became a professor of organic chemistry and started the most brilliant period of his professional career. He widened the area of his research, adding to it the chemistry of higher terpenes and steroids. After the successful synthesis in 1935 of sex hormones (androsterone and testosterone),<ref name=nytobit/> his laboratory became the world centre of organic chemistry.<ref name="nieschlag19">Template:Cite journal</ref> He was awarded in 1936 an honorary degree from Harvard University.<ref name=nytobit/>
In 1939 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Adolf Butenandt.<ref name = Nobel /> Over the period 1934–1939 he published 70 papers in the field of medicinally important steroid sex hormones, and filed several dozen patents besides.<ref name=frs/>
In 1940, following the award, he was invited by the Croatian Chemical Association, where he delivered a lecture to an over-packed hall of dignitaries. The topic of the lecture was From the Dalmatian Insect Powder to Sex Hormones. In 1940 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,<ref name = KNAW-Members>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in 1942 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society,<ref name=frs/> and in 1944 he became an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.<ref name=nas>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During World War II, some of his excellent collaborators were lost, but Ružička restructured his laboratory with new, younger and promising people; among them was young scientist and future Nobel laureate Vladimir Prelog. With new people and ideas new research areas were opened.
In 1946, Ružička and Lardon "established that the fragrance of ambergris is based on the triterpene (named) ambrein".<ref name=ruzicka46>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="frs">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=hillier19/>
Following 1950, Ružička returned to chemistry, which had entered a new era of research. Now he turned to the field of biochemistry, the problems of evolution and the genesis of life, particularly to the biogenesis of terpenes. In 1953, he published his hypothesis, the Biogenetic Isoprene Rule (that the carbon skeleton of terpenes is composed variously of regularly or irregularly linked isoprene units), which was the peak of his scientific career.<ref name=ruzicka53>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1952, Oskar Jeger and he supervised a team which isolated lanosterol and established the link between terpenes and steroids.<ref name=voser52>Voser, W., M. U. Mijovik, H. Heusser, O. Jeger u. L. Ruzicka: Über die Konstitution des Lanostadienols (Lanosterins) und seine Zugehörigkeit zu den Steroiden. Helv. chim. Acta 35, 2414 (1952).</ref> Ružička retired in 1957, turning over the running of the laboratory to Prelog.<ref name="shampo07">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Later life, legacy, honours and awardsEdit
Ružička was the recipient of eight honorary doctorates and the 1938 Marcel Benoist Prize.<ref name=frs/> He was listed as an author on 583 scientific papers.<ref name=frs/> In 1965, he became an honorary member of the Polish Chemical Society,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and he was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.<ref name=nytobit/> After the war he acquired a taste for Dutch masterpieces, which he later lodged in the Kunsthaus Zürich as the Ružička collection.<ref name=frs/> He militated against nuclear weapons.<ref name=ethzarc/>
In 1970, Ružička delivered to the Nobel Laureate Conferences in Lindau a lecture entitled "Nobel Prizes and the chemistry of life".<ref name=frs/>
In later years, he served as a consultant to Sandoz A. G. of Basel.<ref name=frs/>
Ružička dedicated significant efforts to the problems of education. He insisted on a better organization of academic education and scientific work in the new Yugoslavia, and established the Swiss-Yugoslav Society. Ružička became an honorary academician at the then Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb.
In 1974 he was awarded the Order of the Yugoslav Flag with Golden Wreath.<ref name=frs/>
At ETH Zurich, the Ružička Award was established in 1957 on the occasion of his retirement, for young chemists working in Switzerland.<ref name=em90/>
In his native Vukovar, a museum was opened in his honour in 1977.<ref name=frs/>
Ružička's archives are kept at ETH Zurich.<ref name=ethzarc>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Ružička reaction is named after him.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Personal lifeEdit
Ružička married twice: to Anna Hausmann in 1912, and in 1951 to Gertrud Acklin.<ref name = Nobel /> From 1929, he lived at Freudenbergstrasse 101 until the last years of his life.<ref name=frs/> He died in Mammern, Switzerland, a village on Lake Constance at the age of 89.<ref name="nytobit">Template:Cite news</ref>
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
- Speich, Daniel. "Leopold Ruzicka und das Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft in der Chemie" Template:In lang. ETH Zürich. Retrieved 14 August 2017.
- Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture on 12 December 1945 Multimembered Rings, Higher Terpene Compounds and Male Sex Hormones
Template:Croatian Nobel Laureates Template:Nobel Prize in Chemistry Laureates 1926-1950 Template:1939 Nobel Prize winners