Bernhard Tollens

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Bernhard Tollens
Bernhard Tollens
Born	July 30, 1841(1841-07-30) Hamburg, Germany
Died	January 31, 1918 (aged 76) Göttingen, Germany
Alma mater	University of Göttingen
Doctoral students	Emil Votoček

Bernhard Christian Gottfried Tollens was a German chemist.

Tollens attended school at the Johanneum High School in Hamburg where he was influenced by his science teacher, Karl Möbius. After graduating in 1857, Tollens started an apprenticeship in pharmacy. He finished in 1862 and began studying chemistry in Göttingen in Wöhler's laboratory, then supervised by Friedrich Konrad Beilstein and Rudolph Fittig. In 1864, Tollens submitted his thesis and received his PhD without a defense. The latter was possible through the intercession of Wöhler so that Tollens could accept and begin an attractive job at a bronze factory. However, Tollens left the job after only six months and joined the group of Emil Erlenmeyer at the University of Heidelberg for six months. He later worked with Charles-Adolphe Wurtz in Paris and, for 11 months, was chief of the chemical laboratory at the University in the Portuguese capital Coimbra.^[1]

Unable to resist the call of Wöhler, his former professor, Tollens returned to Göttingen in 1872 and there he remained in various positions until his death in 1918. It was during this final time in Göttingen that he started his work on carbohydrates, which yielded structures of several sugars, the Tollens reagent, and most of his publications.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Wallach, Otto (1918). "Nekrolog : Bernhard Tollens". Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft 51, (2): 1539–1555. doi:10.1002/cber.19180510244. 

• Browne, C. A. (1941). "Bernhard Tollens (1841-1918) and Some American Students of his School of Agricultural Chemistry". Journal of Chemical Education 19: 253–259.