Friedrich Wöhler is best known for his synthesis in 1828 of urea from ammonium cyanate. This was generally interpreted by his successors as a major blow to the philosophy of vitalism, which maintained that there was an impassable gulf separating the inorganic compounds found in rock and minerals from the organic compounds found in living organisms. Born in Eschershein, Wöhler studied medicine at the universities of Marburg and Heidelberg, completing his M.D. in 1823. While at Heidelberg, he became interested in chemistry and, at the suggestion of Leopold Gmelin, spent the year following his graduation studying chemistry with Berzelius in his private laboratory at Stockholm. Wöhler taught chemistry at the Technische Hochschulen in Berlin (1825-1831) and Kassel (1831-1836) before becoming Professor of Chemistry in the Medical School at the University of Gottingen, where he remained until his death.

In 1831 Wöhler wrote an elementary textbook of inorganic chemistry, Grundiss der Unorganischen Chemie, that had 15 editions in five languages. Although his published work after 1840 was not as significant as that before, he still generated a stream of interesting work. Though he is best remembered for his work in organic chemistry — the urea synthesis and his cooperative studies with Liebig on both the isomerism of the cyanates and fulminates and the chemistry of the benzoyl radical — much of Wöhler’s research actually dealt with inorganic chemistry. He discovered new methods of preparing beryllium, boron, silicon, titanium and phosphorous, and just missed being the first to discover vanadium and niobium. His extraction of aluminum garnered him an honor from Napolean III. He also discovered silicon nitride, silicon tetrahydride, and calcium carbide, and was the first to suggest that the silanes might exhibit an “organic” chemistry paralleling that of the hydrocarbons.

A quiet and gentle man, Wöhler made his teaching laboratory at Göttingen a Mecca for American students and often acted as a calming influence on his more excitable friends, Berzelius and Liebig. Though these two famous chemists eventually had a falling out, Wöhler managed to remain friends with both of them to the end, and the published volumes of their collected letters give us a valuable insight into their respective personalities.

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