Kurt Alder

Kurt Alder (1902-1958), German chemist and Nobel laureate, born in Königshütte (now Chorzów, Poland), and educated at the University of Kiel. Under the guidance of the German chemist Otto Diels, his chief instructor at Kiel, Alder specialized in diene synthesis (later known also as the Diels-Alder reaction), which is essentially the analysis and formation of complex organic compounds. As early as 1928 he and Diels coauthored a paper on this process. Alder was professor of chemistry at the universities of Kiel and Cologne. In 1950 he and Diels were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work in diene synthesis.