Georg Wittig was a pioneering German chemist whose revolutionary contributions fundamentally transformed synthetic organic chemistry throughout the twentieth century. Born in Berlin on June 16, 1897, he earned his doctorate from the University of Marburg in 1926 and remained there as a lecturer until 1932, establishing his early research foundation. He subsequently held professorships at the Technical University of Braunschweig, University of Freiburg, and University of Tübingen before joining the University of Heidelberg in 1956 as Director of the Chemical Institute, where he conducted his most influential work. At Heidelberg, Wittig led groundbreaking research in organophosphorus chemistry until becoming Professor Emeritus in 1965, though he continued active scientific investigations well beyond his formal retirement.
Wittig's most celebrated achievement, discovered in 1953, was the development of the Wittig reaction, a chemical process where phosphorus ylides react with carbonyl compounds to form alkenes with precise control over double bond placement. This revolutionary method provided organic chemists with an unparalleled tool for constructing carbon-carbon double bonds, enabling the efficient synthesis of complex molecules including vitamins A and D₂, steroids, prostaglandins, and other biologically active compounds. His work established the field of carbanion chemistry as equal in importance to free radical and carbonium ion chemistry, opening entirely new pathways for molecular construction that were previously considered impossible. The Wittig reaction became so fundamental to organic synthesis that it is now taught in undergraduate chemistry curricula worldwide and employed extensively in pharmaceutical and industrial applications on a massive scale.
Beyond the Wittig reaction, his research encompassed a wide range of organic chemistry topics including organolithium compounds, the Wittig rearrangement, strained ring systems, and hypervalent phosphorus compounds, demonstrating remarkable breadth across synthetic methodology. Wittig mentored approximately 300 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers throughout his career, providing close supervision for crucial experiments and fostering the next generation of organic chemists with his characteristic precision. His scientific legacy was formally recognized when he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Herbert C. Brown for developing phosphorus- and boron-containing compounds into important reagents for organic synthesis. With over 300 scientific publications spanning more than five decades, Wittig's work continues to influence modern synthetic chemistry, and his eponymous reaction remains one of the most versatile and widely used transformations in the organic chemist's toolkit across academic and industrial laboratories globally.
