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The Shy Angel Who Missed the Nobel Prize

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The Shy Angel Who Missed the Nobel Prize MILESTONES IN CHEMISTRY Marco Fontani The shy angel who missed the Nobel Prize MARCO FONTANI1*, MARY V. ORNA2 *Corresponding author 1. University of Florence, Department of Chemistry “Hugo Schiff”, via della Lastruccia 13, Sesto F.no Firenze, 50019, Italy 2. College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY, USA The famous organic chemist Adolf von Baeyer (1835-1917) saw ABSTRACT in the young man a sure promise for Italian science and in 1897 Angelo (Angel, in English) Angeli (1864-1931) was one he convinced Angeli to compete for the general chemistry chair of the greatest organic chemists that Italy ever had. It at the peripheral University of Palermo. In those years Angeli’s is widely held – in retrospect – that the Austrian-born- behaviour retrogressed and he became more introverted. He Italian chemist should have been selected for the Nobel found it diffi cult to speak in public and from that time on, he Prize in Chemistry. He was nominated several times, but never participated in conferences or international meetings. Also was never awarded the prize. he loathed speaking on or hearing a voice on the telephone. In 1905, after the death of Augusto Piccini (1854-1905), Angelo Angeli was called to Florence to take up the vacant chemistry chair at the Istituto di Studi Superiori Pratici e di EARLY LIFE Perfezionamento (3). The physicist Antonio Roiti (1843-1921), Dean of the Faculty of he University of Florence had on its faculty two supreme Sciences, communicated the news to Hugo Schiff (1834-1915) 58 chemists: the German Hugo Schiff (1834-1915), and Angelo with the following telegram: “Angeli accepts. He will write very Angeli, who was born in Tarcento (the former Austro-Hungarian soon; reply encouraging him because he is extremely shy”. T th th Empire) on August 20 1864. Neither Schiff nor Angeli was able Although Angeli was the symbolic fi gure of the 19 century to cultivate a scientifi c “nursery” and neither of them created scientist, who devoted his existence to science, as noted, he a “school” in the modern sense of the term. Thus, it is diffi cult to was extremely shy and suspicious of any human relationship. At imagine that a series of experiments performed almost a century the end of World War I he was awarded a gold medal for his ago, which today might appear as astonishingly simple as carefully efforts in developing new anti-gas masks for the Regio Esercito opening an egg, would shake the very foundations of the discipline (Royal Army). He declined this prestigious acknowledgment, and open the door to the era of modern organic-chemistry. and instead formulated an unusual request to the Ministry of Angeli developed a great passion for chemistry early in life. University and Public Education. The reply of the Ministry was While still a child, he started to perform experiments with his sent to the Istituto di Studi Pratici e Perfezionamento: “Due to maternal uncle, Giovanni Carnelutti (1850-1901), an industrial his excessive shyness, it is recommended that Professor Angeli chemist. Angeli attended the Technical Institute of Udine and be released from all his academic duties, such as teaching or later moved to the Technische Hochschule (Polytechnic) of public speeches”. Vienna, but he soon went to the University of Padua where he met Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826-1910) and Giacomo Ciamician (1857-1922). The latter recognized that Angeli had a keen and acute intelligence. In 1889, when Professor Ciamician moved to Bologna, although he was still a student, he asked Angeli to follow him as his private assistant. The young Angeli graduated in 1891 and two years later his colleagues suggested that he qualify as a university faculty member. Even though in 1895, he fi nished fi rst in the academic competition for the analytical chemistry chair, bureaucratic impediments obliged him to withdraw from the position. In 1896 Angelo Angeli and independently Enrico Rimini (1874-1917) discovered the reaction between an aldehyde and a sulfonamide to form a hydroxamic acid, and they published it in the same year (1). The reaction was mainly used as a chemical test in the dairy Figure 1. May 1928: Angelo Angeli, third from the right, with his co-workers and industry for the detection of aldehydes for food storage. assistants, standing in the courtyard of the Istituto di Chimica in Florence. The Angeli-Rimini reaction has recently been applied in solid-phase synthesis (2). chimica oggi/Chemistry Today - vol. 30 n. 4 July/August 2012.
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