Otto Diels

Otto Paul Hermann Diels (23 January 1876 – 7 March 1954) was a German chemist. He was the son of a professor of philology at the University of Berlin, where he himself earned his doctorate in chemistry, in the group of Emil Fischer.

Diels taught till 1916 at the University of Berlin and from 1916 till 1945 at the University of Kiel. Two of his sons were killed in World War II.

In 1950 he and his student, Kurt Alder, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their discovery and development of the cycloaddition synthesis". This organic synthesis is known also as the Diels-Alder reaction. It regioselectively produces up to four chiral centers and is one of the most useful reactions of its type.
See also

* List of chemists

External links

• Nobel Foundation biography
• Nobel Lecture Description and Importance of the Aromatic Basic Skeleton of the Steroids
• Photo of Diels and Alder
• Biography from the University of Kiel

List of chemists

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