Friedrich Konrad Beilstein

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Friedrich Konrad Beilstein, born 17 February 1838, perished 18 October 1906, both in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Beilstein was a chemist and is the founder of the famous Handbuch der organischen Chemie. The first edition of Beilstein's Handbook of Organic Chemistry in 1881 contained 1,500 compounds and 2,200 pages. This handbook is now known as the Beilstein database.

He received education at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, where he became a professor extraordinarius in 1865. Only one year later, in 1866, he left Göttingen and became a professor in Saint Petersburg. He is also the one who developed the Beilstein test, an elemental test used to detect the presence of halogens.