Fischer, Ernst Otto

Ernst Otto Fischer, (born Nov. 10, 1918, Munich, Ger.—died July 23, 2007, Munich), German theoretical chemist and educator who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1973 for his identification of a completely new way in which metals and organic substances can combine. He shared the prize with Geoffrey Wilkinson of Great Britain.

Fischer served in the German army before and during World War II. In 1952 he received a doctorate in natural sciences from the Technical University in Munich. He lectured there in 1954–57 and became professor of inorganic chemistry and director of the Inorganic Chemistry Institute in 1964. He served on faculties at the University of Munich (1957–64) and in Jena (1959) and Marburg (1960 and 1964).

In 1951 Fischer read about a newly developed synthetic compound called ferrocene whose structure was unknown. After studying the substance, he concluded that it consisted of two five-sided carbon rings with a single iron atom sandwiched between them. Wilkinson made this same discovery of organometallic sandwich compounds independently of Fischer, and the two men shared the Nobel Prize for their work.