ZEMPLÉN, Géza
* 26. 10. 1883, Trenčín, Slovakia
† 24. 7. 1956, Budapest, Hungary
Chemist
Z.’s father was a post inspector and was transferred a lot, which caused his family to move several times. He attended grammar school in Reka. After graduating from the Faculty of Arts in Budapest, he studied natural sciences and chemistry. He got admission and a government grant to Eötvös József College, where the most elite Hungarian scientists acquired their knowledge. He wrote his thesis on physical chemistry under Karl Than and completed his studies with "summa cum laude". He began working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the School of Forestry and Mining in Banská Štiavnica in 1905. In 1907 he went to Berlin on a government grant to work with the staff of the Nobel Prize winner, Emil Fischer. Fischer introduced the field of organic chemistry to Z. and the latter remained loyal to it for the rest of his life. He returned to Banska Štiavnica in 1910. In 1912 he was appointed ordinary professor and head of the newly established Institute for Organic Chemistry of the Technical University of Budapest and remained its head until his death. He became a correspondent member in 1923 and a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1927. A large part of his 200 publications were dedicated to Carbohydrate Chemistry. His first major discovery was the reaction of acetylated carbohydrate with sodium methoxide (1925). He discovered a new process called Z's method for the catalytic saponification of sugar acetates using sodium methoxide in 1929. Z's carbohydrate degradation is an important method for demonstrating the structure of disaccharides (1926/29).
His mercury acetate method was a new process for obtaining glucose (grape sugar). In the last part of his life Z. dealt mostly with flavon glycosides. The discovery of the structure of natural flavon glycosides made the synthetic production of these compounds possible.
