Ferdinand Bohlmann

Ferdinand Bohlmann ( 27 August 1921 - 23 September 1991) was a German chemist, known for his studies of plant natural products chemistry, especially terpenoids and polyynes.

Ferdinand Bohlmann
Born	28 August 1921 (1921-08-28) Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
Died	23 September 1991 (1991-09-24) (aged 70)
Scientific career
Fields	Chemistry

Life

Bohlmann studied chemistry in Göttingen from 1939 to 1944 . His studies were interrupted by military service and injury. In 1946 he received his doctorate under Hans Brockmann (1903–1988) on chromatography of pyridine compounds.^[1] He then worked under Hans Herloff Inhoffen at the University of Marburg. Bohlmann followed Inhoffen to the TH Braunschweig and completed his habilitation there. Bohlmann became a lecturer in 1952 and an adjunct professor in 1957. In 1959 he succeeded Friedrich Weygand at the TU Berlin (1911–1969) at the Institute for Organic Chemistry, where he led a rapidly expanding working group. His most famous academic student is Helmut Schwarz.

Bohlmann died on 23 September 1991.^[2]

Work

Bohlmann's main area of work was natural products chemistry, especially terpenes and polyynes.^[2] These were mainly isolated from plants of the Asteraceae family, (formerly Compositae), and their structure was elucidated. Bohlmann also worked on the characterization of quinolizidine alkaloids.^[2] Bohlmann's list of publications includes around 1300 publications.^[2] His collaboration with the biodiversity informatics working group at the Berlin Botanical Garden resulted in a system with which the chemical substances of the Compositae were made accessible in a database, the "Bohlmann Files". The Bohlmann-Rahtz pyridine synthesis is named after Bohlmann and Dieter Rahtz.

Honors

In 1954, he received the lecturer prize of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie. In 1958 he was awarded the Göttingen Academy Prize. The Bohlmann Lecture series was established in his honor in 1989 at the Institute for Chemistry at the TU Berlin. From 2004 to 2018 this event was funded by the Schering Foundation.^[2] Since 2019 the event has been carried out in cooperation with Bayer AG.^[3]

Bohlmann lecture

Guest	Year	Title of talk	Institution	Country
Albert Eschenmoser	1989	Why not hexose nucleic acids?	ETH Zürich	Switzerland
Meinhart H. Zenk	1990	Why do plants have to be virtuoso chemists?	LMU München	Germany
Elias James Corey	1991	New Developments in the Field of Steroids	Harvard University	United States
Duilio Arigoni	1992	Synthesis and detection of chiral t-butyl groups	ETH Zürich	Switzerland
Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou	1993	Chemistry and Biology of the Enediyne Anticancer Antibiotics	UCSD	United States
Koji Nakanishi	1994	Lessons from Nature	Columbia University	United States
Jean-Marie Lehn	1995	Supramolecular Chemistry : Concepts and Recipes	Collège de France	France
Ekkehard Winterfeldt	1996	Natural product synthesis : experimental challenge, intellectual game, chemical treasure trove	Leibniz Universität Hannover	Germany
Yoshito Kishi	1997	Stereochemistry Assignment by Organic Synthesis	Harvard University	United States
Jack E. Baldwin	1998	How old is Penicillin	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
Ryoji Noyori	1999	Asymmetric Catalysis: Science and Opportunities	Nagoya University	Japan
Dieter Seebach	2000	A trip into the world of β-proteins	ETH Zürich	Switzerland
George Whitesides	2001	Polyvalency in Biochemistry	Harvard University	United States
Samuel J. Danishefsky	2002	On the Awesome Power of Chemical Synthesis	Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center	United States
Peter B. Dervan	2003	Molecular Recognition of DNA by Small Molecules	California Institute of Technology	United States
Manfred T. Reetz	2004	Directed Evolution of Enantioselective Enzymes	Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung	Germany
Christopher T. Walsh	2005	Tailoring of Natural Products by Biosynthetic Halogenations	Harvard Medical School	United States
Robert H. Grubbs	2006	Olefin Metathesis: from Fundamental Science to Applications	California Institute of Technology	United States
Aaron Ciechanover	2007	The Ubiquitin System – From Bench to Bedside	Technion	Israel
Richard R. Schrock	2008	Monoalkoxide Monopyrrolide Olefin Metathesis Catalysts of Molybdenum	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
Gerhard Ertl	2009	Elementary Steps in Heterogeneous Catalysis	Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society	Germany
Ada E. Yonath	2010	The amazing ribosome, its tiny enemies and hints of its origin	Weizmann Institute of Science	Israel
Ei-ichi Negishi	2011	Magical Power of Transition Metals: Past, Present, and Future[3]	Purdue University	United States
David MacMillan	2012	New Catalysis Concepts	Princeton University	United States
David Milstein	2013	Discovery of Metal-Catalyzed Reactions for Sustainable Chemistry	Weizmann Institute of Science	Israel
François Diederich	2014	New acetylene and cumulene chemistry: from optoelectronic and chiroptical molecular materials to supramolecular systems	ETH Zürich	Netherlands
Phil Baran	2015	Studies in Natural Product Synthesis	The Scripps Research Institute	United States
Frances Arnold	2016	Innovating with Evolution: Expanding the Enzyme Universe	California Institute of Technology	United States
Alois Fürstner	2017	Catalysis for Synthesis – Concepts and Scrutiny	Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung	Germany
Ben L. Feringa	2018	The Art of Building Small − from Molecular Switches to Motors	Stratingh Institute for Chemistry	Netherlands
Hiroaki Suga	2019	Revolutionizing the discovery processes of de novo bioactive peptides and biologics	University of Tokyo	Japan

Bibliography

• Bohlmann, F., Burkhardt, T., & Zdero, C. (1973). Naturally Occurring Acetylenes. Academic Press.
• Seaman, F., Bohlmann, F., Zdero, C., & Mabry, T. J. (2012). Diterpenes of Flowering Plants: Compositae (Asteraceae). Springer Science & Business Media.