Open AccessOn the Density of Racemic and Homochiral Crystals: Wallach, Liebisch and Sommerfeld in Göttingen
Author(s) -
KarlHeinz Ernst
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
chimia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.387
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2673-2424
pISSN - 0009-4293
DOI - 10.2533/chimia.2018.399
Subject(s) - bromide , chemistry , crystal (programming language) , crystallography , stereochemistry , organic chemistry , programming language , computer science
The first comparison of heterochiral crystals with their homochiral counterparts was given by Otto Wallach in an account on carvone bromide crystals in 1895 in Liebigs Annalen der Chemie. Although the well-known mineralogist Theodor Liebisch, professor in Göttingen from 1887 to 1908, performed the analyses and wrote the last four pages of that Annalen paper, his colleague from chemistry, Wallach served as sole author. We discuss whether Wallach or Liebisch had the idea of a comparative study of crystal densities of racemates and their homochiral analogues and who of the two should be credited.