Abstract
DR. E. GRANICHSTADTEN died at Edinburgh on January 5, 1944. He was one of Austria's most successful industrial chemists, possessing the rare ability both to make discoveries and to apply them; he was also a great benefactor to science. His most outstanding contribution to chemistry was the development of the catalytic hydrogenation of oils and fats which made margarine manufacture possible. Shortly after Sabatier and Senderens had demonstrated that unsaturated hydrocarbons in the gaseous phase could be hydrogenated in the presence of a nickel catalyst, Dr. Granichstadten began his experiments on the transformation of vegetable oils into edible fats. After many difficulties he finally succeeded by passing electrolytic hydrogen through the highly purified oils into which the catalyst had been introduced as a readily reducible nickel salt, a process which found wide industrial application in most European countries.
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PERUTZ, M. Dr. E. Granichstadten. Nature 153, 428 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153428a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153428a0