page_title: Karl Ziegler
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Karl Ziegler / Biography / Career
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim Kamera-Position: 51°24′58.90″N 6°53′5.26″E&#xfeff; / &#xfeff;51.416361°N 6.8847944°E Blick nach Nord-Ost
context_page_description: Karl Waldemar Ziegler was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Giulio Natta, for work on polymers. The Nobel Committee recognized his "excellent work on organometallic compounds [which]...led to new polymerization reactions and ... paved the way for new and highly useful industrial processes". He is also known for his work involving free-radicals, many-membered rings, and organometallic compounds, as well as the development of Ziegler–Natta catalyst. One of many awards Ziegler received was the Werner von Siemens Ring in 1960 jointly with Otto Bayer and Walter Reppe, for expanding the scientific knowledge of and the technical development of new synthetic materials.
context_section_description: Karl Ziegler showed an eagerness for science at an early age.  He progressed through schooling quickly receiving a doctorate from the University of Marburg in 1920.  Soon after, he briefly lectured at the University of Marburg and the University of Frankfurt.  In 1926 he became a professor at the University of Heidelberg where he spent the next ten years researching new advances in organic chemistry.  He investigated the stability of radicals on trivalent carbons leading him to study organometallic compounds and their application in his research.  He also worked on the syntheses of multi-membered ring systems.  In 1933 Ziegler published his first major work on large ring systems, "Vielgliedrige Ringsysteme" which presented the fundamentals for the Ruggli-Ziegler dilution principle.
  In 1936 he became Professor and Director of the Chemical Institute (Chemisches Institut) at the University of Halle/Saale and was also a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago.
  Ziegler, who was a Patron Member of the SS received the War Merit Cross 2nd Class in October 1940.
  From 1943 until 1969, Ziegler was the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research (Max-Planck-Institut fur Kohlenforschung) formerly known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut fur Kohlenforschung) in Mülheim an der Ruhr as a successor to Franz Fischer.
  Karl Ziegler was credited with much of the postwar resurrection of chemical research in Germany and helped found the German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker) in 1949.  He served as president for five years. He was also the president of the German Society for Petroleum Science and Coal Chemistry (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mineralölwissenschaft und Kohlechemie), from 1954 to 1957.
  In 1971, The Royal Society, London, elected him as a Foreign Member.
caption: Max Planck Institute for Coal Research.
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