Abstract
WE regret to learn from the Chemiker-Zeitung of the death on December 15 of Dr. Willy Merck, a member of the well-known firm of chemical manufacturers, E. Merck of Darmstadt. Dr. Merck, who was born in 1860 at Darmstadt, was the son of Dr. Georg Franz Merck, the discoverer of papaverine. After studying at the Universities of Heidelberg, Strasbourg and Kiel and at the Polytechnic at Aachen, he graduated at Kiel in 1886, where he had worked under the direction of Ladenburg. His thesis embodied the results of his studies on cocaine and he had been able to effect a partial synthesis of this alkaloid by the methylation of benzoylecgonin, a by-product obtained during the extraction of cocaine. Many years later, the complete synthesis of naturally occurring l-cocaine and of d-pseudo-cocaine was carried out in the Merck laboratories by W. Merck in collaboration with R. Willstatter.
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Dr. Willy Merck. Nature 131, 298 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131298b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131298b0