Life

Otto Ruff was born in Schwäbisch Hall

Schwäbisch Hall

Schwäbisch Hall is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg and capital of the district of Schwäbisch Hall. The town is located in the valley of the river Kocher in the north-eastern part of Baden-Württemberg....

, Württemberg

Württemberg

Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....

. After becoming an pharmacist

Pharmacist

Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...

 under the supervision of Carl Magnus von Hell

Carl Magnus von Hell

Carl Magnus von Hell was the German chemist who discovered, together with Jacob Volhard and the Russian chemist Nikolay Zelinsky, the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation reaction.-Life:...

 (known from the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation

Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation

The Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation reaction halogenates carboxylic acids at the α carbon. The reaction is named after three chemists, the German chemists Carl Magnus von Hell and Jacob Volhard and the Russian chemist Nikolay Zelinsky .- Scheme :Unlike other halogenation reactions, this...

) at the University of Stuttgart

University of Stuttgart

The University of Stuttgart is a university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized in 10 faculties....

 he joined the group of Hermann Emil Fischer

Hermann Emil Fischer

Hermann Emil Fischer, Emil Fischer was a German chemist and 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms.-Early years:Fischer was born in Euskirchen, near Cologne,...

 at the University of Berlin. Fischer was noted for his work on carbohydrates (sugars) and so Ruff started his career as organic chemist. In 1898 he published his work on the transformation of d-Glucose to d-Arabinose later called the Ruff degradation

Ruff degradation

In 1898, Otto Ruff published his work on the transformation of D-Glucose to D-Arabinose later called the Ruff degradation.In this reaction, D-Glucose is converted to D-Arabinose . In this reaction, primarily terminal aldehyde group is converted to carboxylic group, using selective oxidizing of...

. Supported by Fischer Ruff became head of the new inorganic department in Berlin. This drastical change in subject benefitted Ruff and during his work on chlorides sulfur compounds. In 1902 he married Meta Richter a pharmacist, from this marriage he had three children. In 1904 he became professor at the University of Danzig and from 1916 he was head of the inorganic department at the University of Breslau. He died three years after his retirement in 1939. His last years of teaching were made miserable by a privatdozent and assistant, Helmut Hartmann, who had joined the Nazi party and became an "insolent politician" who made life unbearable for many.

Scientific achievements

Otto Ruff published 290 papers and two books. The books were: "The Chemistry of Fluorine" (published in 1920 by Springer Verlag, Berlin) and "Introduction to Chemical Practicum" (Leipzig 1926, 2nd edition 1937). His papers can be categorized as follows: chemistry of sugars (17 papers), inorganic chemistry of fluorine (86), high temperature chemistry (44), electrolysis of molten salts (9), plastics (10), carbides (20), explosions in mines (7), other fields of inorganic chemistry (72).

Along with Svante Arrhenius

Svante Arrhenius

Svante August Arrhenius was a Swedish scientist, originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, and one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry...

, Henri Moissan

Henri Moissan

Ferdinand Frederick Henri Moissan was a French chemist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds.-Biography:...

, and Alfred Werner

Alfred Werner

Alfred Werner was a Swiss chemist who was a student at ETH Zurich and a professor at the University of Zurich. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for proposing the octahedral configuration of transition metal complexes. Werner developed the basis for modern coordination chemistry...

, all of whom received Nobel Prizes, O. Ruff was regarded as the driver of the achievements of inorganic chemistry in first decades of 20 century.