Friedrich Wöhler (July 31, 1800 to September 3, 1882) and the Synthesis of Urea
Submitted by Alan Rogol, MD
Friedrich Wöhler was a German chemist who worked in both the fields of inorganic and organic chemistry. For the former he had discovered a number of metals including Aluminum. To form organic compounds one required a “vital force” that only living cells could provide; thus organic compounds could not be synthesized in the laboratory. In 1828 Wöhler did synthesize urea, an organic compound from ammonium cyanate (Wöhler, Friedrich On the artificial synthesis of urea. Ann Physik Chemie. 1828 88:253). That synthesis demonstrated a second concept, isomerism, that his mentor, the Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzalius (1779-1848) had promulgated earlier, for the two compounds had the same elemental composition, but far different properties.