Otto Diels

Otto Paul Hermann Diels (1876–1954) was a German chemist who shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kurt Alder for discovering the Diels–Alder reaction.

Kurt Alder: Kurt Alder was a German chemist who shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Otto Diels for discovering the Diels–Alder reaction. Alder collaborated with Diels on the reaction that earned both chemists the Nobel Prize.
Diels–Alder reaction: The Diels–Alder reaction joins a conjugated diene and a dienophile to form a six-membered ring in a concerted cycloaddition. This is the specific discovery associated with Diels and Alder’s Nobel Prize.
Otto Diels–Kurt Alder collaboration: Otto Diels and Kurt Alder were German chemists whose collaboration led to the discovery of the Diels–Alder reaction. Their joint work, rather than Diels’s research alone, produced the discovery recognized by the Nobel committee.
Organic synthesis: Organic synthesis is the deliberate construction of organic compounds through chemical reactions. The Diels–Alder reaction became a broadly useful method within the field Diels helped transform.
Hermann Diels: Hermann Diels was a German classical philologist known for collecting and editing texts by the pre-Socratic philosophers. He was Otto Diels’s father, connecting the chemist’s family background to classical scholarship.
Diene: A diene is a molecule containing two carbon–carbon double bonds. A conjugated diene supplies four of the six π electrons in the reaction named for Diels.
Quinone: A quinone is a conjugated cyclic diketone derived from an aromatic compound by oxidation. Diels and Alder’s early reaction studies included the addition of dienes to quinones.
Total synthesis: Total synthesis is the chemical construction of a complex natural product from simpler starting materials. Chemists use Diels–Alder reactions to assemble rings and carbon frameworks in natural-product synthesis.
Kiel University: Kiel University is a public research university in Kiel, Germany, founded in 1665. Diels held a professorship at Kiel, where his research with Alder produced their celebrated discovery.
Dienophile: A dienophile is an alkene or alkyne that reacts with a diene in a cycloaddition. It supplies the two π electrons that complete the Diels–Alder reaction’s new ring.

Linked from 3 pages

Carbon suboxideRelated: Diels later developed a practical synthesis that made carbon suboxide easier to investigate.