Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer

Important discoveries in chemistry most certainly contribute to the industrial and economic developments and indirectly direct the course of history. A majority of Baeyer's research findings are of this kind. In the pursuit of synthesising a variety of organic compounds for more than half a century, Baeyer became the first chemist who can be considered as classical synthetic organic chemist. He did groundbreaking research in sixteen different areas of organic chemistry, such as dyes, hydroaromatic compounds, polyacetylenes, uric acid and related compounds, natural products. Baeyer's strain theory is a common textbook topic at the UG level. His work on hydroaromatic compounds strongly supported Kekule's benzene structure. For this and the work on dyes, he was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.