PETER GRIESS-DISCOVERER COMPOUNDS'
OF DIAZO
SISTER VIRGINIA HEINES, S.C.N. Nazareth College, Louisville, Kentucky
The name of Peter Griess resounds again and again while one is wandering through the expansive workahaps of the dye industry
ONE
HUNDRED years ago the diazotization process for aromatic amines was discovered by Peter Griess. He lived and worked at a time when the dyestuffs industry and organic chemistry were growing up together. His sharp observations stimulated by a character of iron perseverance enabled him to contribute by his discoveries to a gigantic industry. Today, its products are first in number and second only to the anthraquinoid vat dyes in monetary value (I). Manufacturers gambled upon t,he ideas produced by patient workers who were not often interested in the commercial development of t,heir creations. The history of the a7,o colors is a very complicated one, for industrialists had the habit of keeping few records and of blocking competition with patents which did not tell the whole story. Existing literature in English on the life and works of Peter Griess is very scanty. The material for this brief sketch has been taken mainly from a trihute paid to his memory by three of his contemporaries, A. W. von Hofmann, Emil Fischer, and Heinrich Caro2 (2). Johann Peter Griess was born in the village of Kirchhosbach, Hesse Cassel, Germany, on Sept,ember 6, 1829. His father, a ~vell-to-dolandowner as well as the village smith, planned for his son to become a farmer, and sent him at the age of fifteen or sixteeu to an agricultural school. With the restlessness of youth aud seeming lack of interest in soil tillage, he shifted from one polytechnic school to another, until in the spring of 1855 he matriculated for the third time at t,he University of Marburg. Drawn into the whirlpool of a st,ormy student life he fell deeply in debt, from which he mas partly extricated by the sale and mortgage of his father's farms. After this escapade Peter seemed stimulated to greater academic efforts and for the first time began attending regularly the lectures on the natural sciences. In late summer he accepted a position in the laboratory of Herman Xolbe, but mheu the old master, unimpressed by Griess's accomplishments, failed to recommend him later for another position, he left the university to work in the aniline factory of I
