Peter Ludwig Pauson

1939 Emigration mit der Familie nach England

cf.: http://www.germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/t...

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Prof Peter Ludwig Israel Pauson FRSE FRIC (1925–2013) was a German–Jewish emigrant who settled in Britain and who is remembered for his contributions to chemistry, most notably the Pauson–Khand reaction[1] and as joint discoverer of ferrocene.[2]

He was born in Bamberg, Germany on 30 July 1925, the son of Stefan Pauson and his wife, Helene Dorothea Herzfelder.[3] His parents escaped to England in 1939 with Peter and his two sisters to flee the Nazi persecution of Jews.[4]

In 1942 the family moved to Glasgow and he began studying chemistry in the University of Glasgow under Thomas Stevens Stevens. After graduating in 1946, he moved to Sheffield University as a postgraduate, studying under Robert Downs Haworth and receiving his doctorate in 1949. He then went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and pursued research on tropolones and other aromatic non-benzenoid molecules. His discovery of ferrocene with his student, Thomas J. Kealy, arose from an attempt to dimerize cyclopentadienylmagnesium bromide using Iron(III) chloride; the orange-yellow solid with formula C10H10Fe was described as a "molecular sandwich" in Pauson's note which was published in Nature in 1951.[5]

From 1951 to 1952 he studied at the University of Chicago under Morris Kharasch, then becoming a DuPont Fellow at Harvard University. He then gained practical experience at the DuPont Laboratories in Wilmington. Returning to Britain, he became a lecturer at Sheffield University and in 1959 became Professor of Organic Chemistry at Strathclyde University. In 1964 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[6]

Pauson and his postdoctoral assistant, Ihsan Khand, discovered the reaction now renowned as the Pauson–Khand reaction in 1971, though Pauson always referred to it as the "Khand reaction".[5]

In 1994, the University of Strathclyde established the Merck Pauson Chair in Preparative Chemistry, funded by Merck, marking the contribution of Pauson to chemistry and to the university.[7]

Pauson retired in 1995 and died peacefully at home on 10 December 2013. He was cremated at Clydebank Crematorium.[8] In his obituary, he is described as "a gentleman of modesty, humility, and compassion … a fine man and a marvellous scientist".[5]

He married Lai-Ngau Mary (née Wong) (1928 – March 18, 2010),[9] having met her at a party hosted by Enrico Fermi when Pauson was at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s.[5] They went on to have two children, Hilary and Alfred.[10]