Rolf Appel

Rolf Appel (25 February 1921 – 30 January 2012) was an inorganic chemist who worked in the area of organophosphorus chemistry.

Education

Appel received his vordiplom at Halle in 1941 and, after the war, completed his diplomarbeit also at Halle in 1945. During this time, he was influenced by G. O. Schenck and Karl Ziegler. Several years after the war, he entered the graduate program at Heidelberg, receiving his PhD for studies on disulfur trioxide at age 30. His supervisor was the renown Margot Becke-Goehring.^[1][2] He was appointed in 1962 to the University of Bonn, where he remained throughout his career. Among his many innovations at Bonn, he developed the Appel reaction.^[3] For his discovery, Appel received the Liebig Medal. In 1986, he retired from the inorganic institute.^[1] He was succeeded by Edgar Niecke, also a phosphorus chemist.^[4]

The Appel reaction is an organic reaction that converts an alcohol into an alkyl chloride using triphenylphosphine and carbon tetrachloride.^[3]