Othmar Zeidler

Othmar Zeidler (1859^[1] - 26 June 1911) was an Austrian chemist credited with the first synthesis of DDT.

He was a son of the Viennese pharmacist Franz Zeidler. Othmar's brother, Franz Zeidler Jr. (1851–1901), also became a chemist and would collaborate with him on several projects.^[2] As a doctoral student with Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Strasbourg, then in Germany, Zeidler is credited with the first synthesis of the insecticide Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane or DDT in 1874. Othmar returned to Austria before 1876 and, after working at the I. chemischen Universitätslaboratorium at the University of Vienna,^[2] became a pharmacist in the Fünfhaus district of the capital [1].

References

1. ^ A birth year of 1859 would make him a mere 14 years old at the time of his dissertation in 1873. The 1859 birth year was used by Joseph S. Fruton, in his Contrasts in scientific style: research groups in the chemical and biochemical sciences, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Vol 191, 1990, page 373, as well as by Gerhard Oberkofler in Leopold Ruzicka, 1887-1976: schweizer Chemiker und Humanist aus Altösterreich‎ - Page 44. The latter even has him quit his pharmacy studies at the Vienna University in 1872 (at the apparent age of 12/13) to move to Strassburg.
2. ^ ^{a b} Obituary of Franz Zeidler Jr in Zeitschrift des allgemeinen Oesterreichischen Apotheker-Vereines, Volume 39, 1901

• History | CDC Malaria at www.cdc.gov
• Othmar Zeidler (1874). "Verbindungen von Chloral mit Brom- und Chlorbenzol". Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft 7 (2): 1180–1181. doi:10.1002/cber.18740070278. 

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