KURT H. MEYER RALPH E. OESPER University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
KURT HEINRICHMEYEH, whose achievement8 in organic chemistry are internationally known, was born at Dorpat, Esthonia, on September 29, 1883. His father, a German, who was then professor of pharmacology a t Dorpat University, later held a similar chair at Vienna. The son hegan his professional training in medicine, hut later transferred his interest to chemistry. After attending several German universities, he spent one term under Sir William Ramsay a t Universit,~ College, London. The doctorate degree was conferred in 1907 a t Leipzig; the dissertation: "Untersuchungen iiber Halochromie" was prepared under the direction of Art,hur Hantzsch. A year as assist,ant to Th. Zincke at, Marburg was followed by a period in a similar capacit,y in Baeyer's laboratory at Munich. Here Dr. Meyer hahilitated as Privatdozent in 1911; the habilitation essay dealt with keto-en01 tautomerism. The stcad? stream of publications (33 up to 1914) was interrupted by World War I. In 1917 Dr. Meyer was appointed associate professor a t Munich, and continued his work with such distinction that in 1921 he was given the responsible post of director of research of the Hadische Anilin & Sodafahrik (later I. G. Farbenindust,rie). In 1932 he left industry and returned to academic life, accept,ing the call to his present post as head of the laboratories of organic and inorganic chemistry a t the University of Geneva, where he wcceeded Am6 Pictet, (1857-1937). Professor Meyer has about 250 papers to his credit,. These deal with a wide variet,y of fields in organic chemistry, but especially topics that lie a t the horderline of chemistry and physics with biology. He found a simple titration method t o determine the en01 content of keto-en01 mixtures and established methods for preparing labile and hitherto unknown tautomeric forms such as pure en01 and pure keto-acetoacetic ester, anthranol, and oxanthrone, the isomer of anthrahydroquinone. During his industrial period he took up research on natural and synthetic high polymers, and the hulk of his subsequent publications have been in this field. "Der Aufbau der hochpolymeren organischen Saturstoffe," which he published jointly with H. Mark in 1930, contains an account of the then newly acquired knowledge and ideas of the structure of t,hese wmpounds. To extend the ideas contained in this hook, he and his students have carried out further work on polymers; they established chain formulas for elastic sulfur and polyphosphonitrilic chloride and determined the atomic arrangement in cellulose, silk, chitin, and other fibrous polymers. From experiments on the thermodynamics of elastomers and of solutions
of polymers, the kinet,ic theory of rubber-like elasticity (1932) and a qualitative statistical theory of polymer solutions were deduced (1939). The knowledge thus acquired was extended to other fields, particularly to t,he structure and permeability of membranes and to the fine structure of protoplasm. The recent years have been devoted to studies of starch. Meyer found that most starches are composed of a linear polysaccharide and a branched one. The "fringe" micellar structure of t,he starch granule was shown to be the reason for the peculiar swelling phenomena of starch. Several starch splitting enzymes have been obtained in a crystalline condition, e . g., human saliva amylase. "Hochpolymere Chemie" with H. Mark as co-author was published at Leipzig in 1940, and Dr. Meyer furnished the comprehensive review "Natural and Synthetic High Polymers" for the well-known "High Polymer" series puhlished a t New York in 1940.
