Home > Arthur Eichengrün

In 1896, he joined Bayer, working in the pharmaceutical laboratory. In 1908, he quit Bayer and founded his own pharmaceutical factory, the Cellon-Werke in Berlin. His company was "aryanized" by the Nazis in 1938Events January -June January 3 The March of Dimes is established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. January 11 Frances Moulton is the first woman to become president of a US national bank. January 20 Wedding of king Farouk I of Egypt and Farida Zulficar in Cai. In 19431943 is the common year starting on Friday. Events January January 4 End of term for Culbert Olson, 29th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Earl Warren. January 11 The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China. January 1, he was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison for having failed to include the word "Israel" in his company's name. In MayThis article is about the month of May. For other uses, see May (disambiguation). May is the fifth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 31 days. It may have been named for the Roman goddess Maia or more likely for the Roman goddess of fertili 1944Events World War II January January 4 The Battle of Monte Cassino begins. January 5 Murder of Danish playwright Kaj Munck January 17 British forces, in Italy, cross the Garigliano River. January 20 The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin;, he was arrested again on the same charge and deported to the concentration campA concentration camp is a large detention centre created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. The term refers to situations where the interne TheresienstadtTheresienstadt was the German name of the military fortress and garrison town Terezin Czech Republic. In the late 18th century the Austrian Empire erected the fortress near the confluence of the Labe River and Ohre River, named after the Austrian empress, where he spent 14 months until the end of World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough in Europe.

After the liberation, he returned to Berlin, but moved to Bad Wiessee in Bavaria in 1948, where he died the following year at the age of 82.

Eichengrün has made his name through numerous inventions such as processes for synthesizing chemical compounds. He held 47 patents. Arguably, however, he is best known through the controversy around the question who invented Aspirin.

The standard story credits Felix Hoffmann, a young Bayer chemist, with the invention of Aspirin in 1897. (It should be noted, though, that impure acetylsalicylic acid (ASA, the active compound of Aspirin) had been synthesized already in 1853 by French chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt; the 1897 process developed at Bayer was the first to produce pure ASA that could be used for medical purposes.)

In 1949, Arthur Eichengrün published a paper in which he claimed to have planned and directed the synthesis of Aspirin along with the synthesis of several related compounds. He also claimed to be responsible for Aspirin's initial surreptitious clinical testing. Finally, he claimed that Hoffmann's role was restricted to the initial lab synthesis using his (Eichengrün's) process and nothing more.

The Eichengrün version was ignored by historians and chemists until 1999, when Walter Sneader of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow re-examined the case and came to the conclusion that indeed Eichengrün's account was convincing and correct and that Eichengrün deserved credit for the invention of Aspirin. Bayer promptly denied this theory in a press release, claiming that the invention of Aspirin was due to Hoffmann.