Talk:Arthur Eichengrün

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Fact check:

  • In 2000, a Dr. Walter Sneader published a paper entitled The discovery of aspirin: a reappraisal in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) 2000;321:1591-1594 (23 December). In this paper, he re-examined claims made by Arthur Eichengrün in a 1949 paper and came to the conclusion, that
    • Eichengrün was Hoffmann's direct superior,
    • Hoffmann worked under Eichengrün's direction,
    • Hoffmann used methods developed by Eichengrün to synthesize ASA and thus
    • that Eisengrün should be credited as the "true" inventor of Aspirin.
Online responses to that article: [1].
  • Sneader apparently had presented that interpretation already in 1999 at the Royal Society of Chemistry in Edinburgh.
  • In Sept. 1999, Bayer denied this theory in a press release. Bayer states that
    • Eichengrün was not Felix Hoffmann's superior, having joined Bayer in 1896 and thus was still in his probation time in 1897. (Felix Hoffmann had joined Bayer 18 months earlier.)
    • Eichengrün, however, became later the head of a group in which a Fritz Hoffmann worked.
    • Eichengrün never laid claims on Aspirin, even long before the Nazi reign in Germany. He only did so in his 1949 paper. Before, he never challenged the attribution of Hoffmann as the inventor (U.S. patent in 1899), which he could have done anytime (I guess that should mean "anytime before the Nazi era" -- Lupo).
  • Sneader's version has been taken up and reported around the world, but so far I have not found a second independent source that would back him up. Nor have I found a second independent source that would debunk his theory and back up the counter-claims of Bayer.

As of March 2004, the jury is still out on this case: Bayer sticks to the mainstream version crediting Hoffmann, and there is only Sneader's paper arguing for Eichengrün. I feel that resolving this question would still need serious original research by some historians. The article in Wikipedia should make clear that there is an as yet unresolved controversy.

The "life dates" given in the article seem to be correct.

Lupo 12:00, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)