Fritz Pregl
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Fritz Pregl
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1923
Born: 3 September 1869, Laibach, Austria-Hungary (now Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Died: 13 December 1930, Graz, Austria
Affiliation at the time of the award: Graz University, Graz, Austria
Prize motivation: “for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances”
Prize share: 1/1
Work
In nature organisms are composed of an enormously varied quantity of chemical compounds, with the element carbon as a common component. Determining the composition of these chemical compounds is a matter of great importance within chemistry. During the 1910s Fritz Pregl developed methods for doing this. Through an ingenious apparatus and methodology, he made it possible to precisely determine the composition of much smaller amounts of a substance than had been possible before. This was especially important in physiological contexts.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
