Professor Richard Martin Willstätter, c mid-20th century

Richard Martin Willstätter, born 13 August 1872, died 3 August 1942, was a German organic chemist, who is known for his studies of the structure of plant pigments, including chlorophyll, for which he won the 1915 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Willstätter attended the University of Munich in 1890 and remained there for the following 15 years. Willstätter received his PhD in 1894, becoming a lecturer in 1896, and professor without a chair in 1902. In 1903, Willstätter married Sophie Leser, and they had two children before her death in 1908. He left Munich to work at ETH Zurich and there completed his work on chlorophyll. In 1915, Fritz Haber asked him to help him work on poison gases, but Willstätter refused but agreed to work on the protection for such gases. For this work, Willstätter was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. In 1934, due to the Nazis taking power and the Deutsche Physik movement, Willstätter, as a Jewish man, announced his retirement due to mounting discrimination and pressure. Willstätter fled Germany in 1939, moving to Switzerland, living there for the last years of his life, before dying of a heart attack in 1942, aged 69. Willstätter received many awards and honours, including the Faraday Lectureship Prize (1927), Davy Medal (1932), Willard Gibbs Award (1933), and as a Fellow of the Royal Society.