Runge
NAME: Runge, Friedlieb Ferdinand
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Paper chromatography. Carbolic. Creosote.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 8 February 1794, at Billwarder, near Hamburg [Germany]
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 25 March 1867, in Oranienburg, Prussia [Germany],
aged 73
DISCIPLINE: Chemist
FIELD: Chemistry
LANGUAGE: German
PARENTS: ?
SIBLINGS: Six siblings
SPOUSE: None
CHILDREN: None
EDUCATION: University of Berlin, 1816-18; University of Gottingen, 1818;
University of Jena, 1818-19
MAJOR WORK: 'Farbenchemie', 3 vols, 1834, 1842 & 1850
LIFE AND TIMES: At the University of Jena, Runge completed his medical degree with a dissertation on the physiological action of the belladonna alkaloids (1819).
This study (based on his discovery at Lubeck), described his investigations of the toxic actions of atropine, a poisonous, crystalline alkaloid found in such plants as belladonna (deadly nightshade), henbane, and thornapple - using the eye of a cat as a reagent. This 'in vivo' test was later adopted not only in forensic medicine, but also as a general test for atropine-bearing substances.
At Jena, Runge studied analytical chemistry under Dobereiner*. By this stage, Runge was devoting all his energies to chemical research, particularly plant chemistry, and Dobereiner arranged for Runge to travel to Weimar in order to perform his experiment of dilating a cat's pupil at will.
Goethe* was greatly impressed by Runge's knowledge of toxic plants, and presented him with a rare sample of mocha coffee beans, in which Runge later the same year discovered caffeine (1819). During his time at Jena, Runge also studied cinchona bark, which led to his discovery of a basic constituent he named "China base", which proved identical to Pelletier and Caventou's "Chinin" (quinine) discovered a year later, in 1820.
Having earned his doctorate, Runge set out in October 1823 for an extended European
trip, during which he visited many chemists and important chemical factories and laboratories in England, Holland, France and Switzerland.
He went first to Paris, where he met Alexander von Humboldt*, Gay-Lussac* and Liebig* and worked in the laboratory of J.B. Quensneville, who had a factory for the manufacture of pharmaceutical-chemical products. Here Runge was given the task of isolating belladonna from 200 pounds of deadly nightshade leaves. Runge returned to Germany in April 1826, to take up an appointment at the University of Breslau.
In 1832 Runge became a research chemist in a chemical factory at Oranienburg (near Berlin) owned by the Royal Maritime Society. At this time, the chief products of the chemical works were sal ammoniac, yellow prussiate of potash, Berlin and Paris blue, chrome yellow, Glauber slat, soda, concentrated sulfuric acid, and soda soap, but the
owners of the factory were keen to diversity in order to make the business more profitable.
Runge was given a free hand in a fully-equipped industrial laboratory and, starting with research into color chemistry, within two years had made several important discoveries. By distilling coal tar* (a waste product from the Berlin gas works) and treating it with hydrochloric acid to prepare sal ammoniac, Runge discovered creosote* and carbolic acid* (now named phenol, which from 1867, owing to the efforts of Lister*, began to be used as the first effective antiseptic in medicine and surgery), as well as aniline, pyrrole, rosolic acid (aurin), and a mixture which later proved to be made up of quinoline, isoquinoline, and quinaldine.
Runge was also the first to produce aniline blue, which was the earliest preparation of an artificial organic dye from a distillation product of coal tar, and was the first to prepare aniline black and its important oxidation product emeraldine from aniline, noted their value as dyes, for which he obtained a patent in 1834. Runge did not analyze any of these compounds, much of this work being done later by Liebig's laboratory assistant von Hoffmann*, and who later made a series of important investigations of aniline dyes at the University of Berlin in the 1860s.
During the 1830s and 1840s, Runge continued his extensive research into dyes and dyeing, described in a three volume work: 'Farbenchemie' (1834, 1842 and 1850). This last volume is notable for its description of the separation of substances by capillary action, which is the first formal description of what is now called paper chromatography (a technique used in analytical chemistry for separating dissolved chemical substances by taking advantage of their different rates of migration across sheets of paper).
Runge had developed this process during his intensive investigation of aniline, when he was searching for an accurate method of determining the strength of bleaching solutions. Whereas leucol (quinoline) gave no blue color reaction, the color was instantly formed when a solution of bleaching powder came in contact with aniline (which constitutes the famous blueing of aniline by chlorine).
In the first volume of his 'Farbenchemie', Runge outlined a procedure for measuring the strength of bleaching powder solutions by placing a drop of the solution on a piece of dyed cotton goods. To test for free chlorine, a piece of absorbent paper was then impregnated with starch and potassium iodide (as described in volume two of 'Farbenchemie'), and when the paper was spotted with bleaching solution, a blue fleck appeared because of the liberation of iodine and its reaction with the starch. This was in all probability the first authentic spot reaction test using impregnated paper.
Runge retired from the chemical firm in 1852, and for the next fifteen years worked intermittently as a chemical consultant, until his death.
ASSESSMENT: A major and highly productive chemist.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Met Bunsen*.
Knew and worked with Kirchhoff*
His work related to that of Felix Hoffmann*
ONELINER: FF Runge, discoverer of carbolic acid
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
DSB, EB
Anft, Berthold, “Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge: A Forgotten Chemist of the
Nineteenth Century", in Journal of Chemical Education, 32 (1955), 566-74