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Moses Gomberg, the father
of radical chemistry
Moses Gomberg (1866–1947)
was a
chemist.
He was born in
Elizabetgrad in
Russia (now in the
Ukraine). In 1884, the family
emigrated to
Chicago to escape the
pogroms following the
assassination of czar
Alexander II. In 1886, Moses
entered the
University of Michigan, where
he obtained his B.Sc in 1890 and
his doctorate in 1894 under the
supervision of
A. B. Prescott. He remained at
the University of Michigan for the
rest of his life.
In 1896–1897 he took a year's
leave to work as a
postdoctoral researcher to
work with
Baeyer and
Thiele in Munich and with
Victor Meyer in
Heidelberg, where he
successfully prepared the
long-elusive tetraphenylmethane.
During attempts to prepare the
even more
sterically congested
hydrocarbon hexaphenylethane he
correctly identified the
triphenylmethyl
radical, the first persistent
radical to be discovered, and is
thus known as the founder of
radical chemistry. The work was
later followed up by
Wilhelm Schlenk.
References
J. Am. Chem. Soc 1947, 69,
2921-5, obituary by C. S.
Schoepple and W. E. Bachmann
