Othmar Zeidler

Who was Othmar Zeidler?

Othmar Zeidler was an Austrian chemist credited with the first synthesis of DDT.

He was a son of the Viennese pharmacist Franz Zeidler. Othmar's brother, Franz Zeidler Jr., also became a chemist and would collaborate with him on several projects. As a doctoral student with Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Strasbourg, then in Germany, Zeidler is credited with the first synthesis of the insecticide Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane or DDT in 1874. Othmar returned to Austria before 1876 and, after working at the I. chemischen Universitätslaboratorium at the University of Vienna, became a pharmacist in the Fünfhaus district of the capital.