Hans von Euler-Chelpin

Early life and education

The career of Hans von Euler-Chelpin is a useful demonstration of how chemistry actually advances - not in a single leap, but in results that hold.

Hans von Euler-Chelpin was born at Augsburg in 1873. His recorded nationality is Germany. He was educated at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Würzburg.

Professional career

Around the turn of the twentieth century the sciences fractured into specialisms and simultaneously became national assets, funded and directed on a scale no earlier generation had seen.

He held appointments at Stockholm University, where the work centred on chemistry.

Scientific methodology

Chemistry advanced by refusing to accept that a substance was simple merely because nobody had yet split it.

He did not stay inside one field: the work runs across chemistry and biochemistry, which tells you as much about the era's training as about the person.

Context of work

Working from Germany shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.

Honours and legacy

The honours are a fair index of how the work was received - Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1929) and Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Chemistry is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.

Hans von Euler-Chelpin died in 1964 at the age of 91. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.

Achievements

• Nobel Prize in Chemistry — 1929
• Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Held posts at Stockholm University
• Educated at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Würzburg
• Fields of research: chemistry