Richard Adolf Zsigmondy

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Richard Zsigmondy

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (April 1, 1865 in Vienna, Austrian Empire (now Austria) - September 23, 1929 in Göttingen, Germany) was an Austrian-German chemist of Hungarian ancestry who studied colloids. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1925. The Zsigmondy crater on the moon is named in his honor.

[edit] Life and work

Already Zsigmondy was born to Irma von Szakmary and Adolf Zsigmondy Sr., who had been a scientist and had invented surgical instruments in the field of dentistry. He was brought up by his mother after his father's early death in 1880 and received a comprehensive education while nevertheless enjoying hobbies such as climbing and mountaineering with his siblings. In high school he developed an interest in natural science, especially in chemistry and physics and started to carry out experiments in his own home laboratory.

His academic career began at the University of Vienna Medical Faculty, but soon moved on to the Technical University of Vienna and later to the University of Munich in order to study chemistry. In Munich his teacher was von Miller, where he started his scientific career in researching. He went back to Austria in 1893 to start as an assistant professor in Graz. During his work in Graz he accomplished his most notable research work, the work on the chemistry of colloids (a certain coloured glass). In later years he worked on gold hydrosol and developed the slit ultramicroscope.

His scientific career continued in Germany, Göttingen as professor for chemistry where he remained the rest of his professional career. In 1925 Zsigmondy received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on colloids during his time in Graz.

He died only a few years after retirement in 1929 in Göttingen.