ZSIGMONDY, Richard

Z. was born to the son of Viennese Head Physician and assistant professor of dental medicine Adolf Z. and his wife Irma (von Szakmáry). He attended modern nonclassical grammar school in Josefstadt and then started his study of chemistry at the University of Vienna. There he studied under the guidance of Professor Ernst Ludwig, a Robert Wilhelm Bunsen's student, but soon transferred to the Chemical Technical School, which was part of the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied from 1883 to 1887. After the end of his studies he moved to Munich and read organic chemistry under Professor Wilhelm von Miller. On 2nd December 1889 he became a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Erlangen with the "Contributions to the synthesis of indene derivatives". After his doctorate he briefly remained Professor von Miller's assistant and later accepted a similar position as a private assistant to the physicist Professor August Kundt in Berlin.
Between 1893 and 1897 he worked in Graz, where he habilitated. On Kundt's initiative he worked on lustre colours for glass and porcelain. From 1897 on he worked as a research associate at technical laboratory at Glass works Schott und Genossen in Jena, developing coloured glasses and Jena milk glass. He remained there until 1900, when leaving the post in order to exclusively pursue scientific research. Until 1907 he was living in Jena as a private scholar. There he met Laura Luise Müller, Professor Wilhelm Müller's daughter, lecturer in pathological anatomy in Jena and married her in 1903. In Jena he dealt with the gold-ruby glass and reached his first basic discoveries in the field of colloid chemistry. He discovered that colloidal mixtures do not form chemical links, but only move to another state of dispersion. The word colloid in this state no longer meant that there is a glue like substance or its solution, but a spread thin substance. He also developed the slit-ultramicroscope in joint collaboration with physicist Henry Friederich Wilhelm Siedentopf so that his discovery could be seen. It was based on the principle of dark field and in 1913 while living in Göttingen he improved it and made the slit-ultramicroscope with immersion lens. With this microscope he obtained evidence that the Brownian motion does not exist only in the microscope, but also in much smaller particles, which was of great importance for the development of physics. Between 1905 and 1907 he accompanied his discovery with his two basic works. In 1907/08 he lived on his estate in Terlag near Trient. Z. was appointed Professor and Director of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Göttingen in 1908. He remained there until his death. During this time he and his students carried out extensive experiments, and consequently he was able to research complex subject areas. Thus, from 1911 on he was devoted to the experiment in the field of gels structures. He managed to prove that gels are composed of amicrones and are covered with empty spaces, or they consist of a network of very thin threads. His book "Choloidchemie" (Colloid Chemistry), first published in 1912 was so successful that they had to publish it again in 1918, 1920 and 1922 respectively. Completely rebuilt edition in two volumes was published in 1925 and 1927. In 1925 he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the "interpretation of the heterogeneous nature of colloidal solutions, as well as the methods that are fundamental to modern colloid chemistry". He was the Honorary Doctor of Technical University of Vienna, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Königsburg and the University in Graz. In 1924 he was admitted to the Vienna Academy of Sciences as a correspondent member. Z.'s activity in the field of X-ray spectroscopy, which was a basis for the development of X-ray crystallography, was of major importance for modern biochemistry. He also developed a star dialyser, which improved the procedure for separation of mixed solutions (dialysis).